Lorna Irvine has mixed thoughts about Woody Allen's latest.
Cate Blanchett's high-cheekboned nobility is unravelled as the titular character in Woody Allen's new dark morality drama, and she certainly works hard, like Allen's more brittle women a la Charlotte Rampling, Judy Davis or Barbara Hershey, spending around 80% of the film sweating, in tears and maniacally popping Xanax, eyes moving around like pinballs in her skull.
The reason for her meltdown is the loss of her crooked, philandering rich husband Hal (Alec Baldwin, typecast as a sleazebag) to suicide, having been unmasked as a fraudster. Left penniless in the Chanel she stands in, Jasmine (whose real name is Jeanette) is forced to give up her bourgeois New York existence and relocate to San Francisco, where she moves in with decent but fragile sister Ginger (a terrific Sally Hawkins).
Jasmine comes on like a modern-day Blanche DuBois (indeed, she played Blanche on stage in Liv Ullmann's 2009 production of A Streetcar Named Desire) a venal, lying snob, and there are knowing parallels with Tennessee Williams' masterpiece, with two Stanley Kowalskis for the price of one in Ginger's unfortunate choice of partners—ex-husband Augie (played with great brutish swagger by misogynist 'comedian' Andrew Dice Clay) and her new lover Chili (Bobby Cannavale, also simmering with macho violence).
Allen's set pieces are nicely contrasting in flashbacks; the ostentatious splendour of Jasmine and Hal's dinner parties up against the K-mart where Ginger works, but Ginger's house seems a little too spacious and well-appointed, given her supposed lack of wealth.
The humour too often feels rather uncomfortable—for example, the scene where Jasmine is almost sexually assaulted is, bizarrely, played for laughs, and Jasmine's mental health issues do border on insensitive caricature. But there are classic Allen moments—the scenes with Ginger's truth-telling kids are hilarious and true, and the date with Chili's inappropriate friend squirmingly amusing.
The most potent moments are between Jasmine and Ginger—beautifully judged and naturalistic. It is here that Allen's semi-improvised direction seems revitalised and fresh, a reminder of why he was always one of the best American auteurs. It is full credit to Blanchett's wonderful acting for making the audience feel for such an unscrupulous social climber.
However, points must be knocked off for Allen yet again depicting working class people as trashy, badly-dressed, angry and dim portraying (as in so many occasions—see Annie Hall, Sweet and Lowdown and The Purple Rose of Cairo), and the deeply unpleasant, cynical end scene of Jasmine's desolation is almost pornographic in its lingering close-up shot of her twitching face.
At the end of undisputed 1979 classic Manhattan, wise teenager Tracy, played by the brilliant Mariel Hemingway, says, “Everybody gets corrupted... You gotta have a little faith in people.” Woody Allen, it seems, has swapped his faith for misanthropy—and it almost works, with many layers to unpeel. But Blue Jasmine is by no means his finest. Sadly, those days seem way behind him. Not the return to form we had hoped for, this jasmine could smell much sweeter.
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