It has become customary in recent years to greet any
successful Woody Allen venture with the description "a return to
form," but that seems like a strange way to talk about a filmmaker who
scored his biggest commercial success and won an Oscar just two years ago.
Nevertheless, Blue Jasmine can be regarded as a return to a different kind of
form for Allen, the form of his darker '90s pictures such as Husbands and Wives
and Deconstructing Harry. It also marks an interesting shift of focus for the
director. Allen's films are often ensemble pieces, from which one or two
players might step forward to steal the limelight, and it's hard to recall any
comparable film from his body of work that's dominated by a single central
performance as this one is.
The problem is that such an approach works to the detriment
of the other characters. Too many of Woody Allen's films in the past have
attempted to coast by with thinly-sketched characterisations, but the sense of
weight that Cate Blanchett brings to Jasmine in this film only throws the
flimsiness of the supporting players into even starker relief. While Jasmine is given many layers of emotions and complexities, the characters that
surround her are left with only a single note to play throughout the picture. There's a
weird disconnect between the attempt to find a sense of Cassavetes-like immediacy
in Jasmine's breakdown (at times Blanchett bears an eerie resemblance to Gena
Rowlands) and the sheer phoniness of the world she inhabits.
The world, in this case, is a new one for Allen. Blue
Jasmine is set in San Francisco, where the title character has arrived from New
York after suffering a breakdown. Once a New York socialite, Jasmine has now
been left penniless and directionless after the revelation that her husband Hal
(Alec Baldwin) had been indulging in some financial double-dealing, and she
intends to rebuild her life with her adopted younger sister Ginger (Sally
Hawkins). The template here is clearly A Streetcar Named Desire, with
Blanchett's arrival driving a wedge between Ginger and her blue-collar fiancé Chili
(Bobby Cannavale). She does this by barely attempting to conceal her distaste
for their working-class lives and by making every situation into more fuel for
her own narcissism. She's a monstrous creation, who we first see on a plane
telling her whole life story to the unfortunate soul trapped in the seat next
to her. She gets to escape as soon as the plane lands, but we're not so lucky.
By the time the film had finished, I knew how that woman felt.
Blue Jasmine can be quite an exhausting experience, not just because of the wholehearted
effort that Blanchett is putting into every scene, but because the writing and
direction is afflicted by so many of the flaws that have plagued Woody Allen's
most recent films. His view of both the high social circles Jasmine moved
before the fall and the more modest surroundings she finds herself in is
simplistic and clichéd, and his storytelling devices hinge on the most
hackneyed situations.
The most grating of these instances occurs towards the end
of the film when a chance encounter on a street precipitates another drastic
change in Jasmine's circumstances, and the kind of baldly expositional dialogue
that sounds like nothing any human being would say. It helps, at least, that
this dialogue is being delivered by Andrew Dice Clay, with the erstwhile
stand-up comedian proving to be an inspired choice to play Ginger's ex-husband
Augie. Having been persuaded by Hal to plunge his lottery winnings into a
Ponzi-type scheme, Augie burns with an unabated sense of anger, wounded pride
and regret at his missed opportunities. Clay gives this archetypal character a
sense of humanity that makes him the most empathetic character in the film.
There is some fun to be had in watching Allen's talented
ensemble make as much as they can out of the parts they've been given; Michael
Stuhlbarg is amusing as a lovestruck doctor with wandering hands and Louis CK
turns up briefly as a charming but untrustworthy lothario. But there's also an
ongoing sense of frustration in how lazy and flaccid Allen's filmmaking has
become. Blue Jasmine may be one of his more competent and sustained efforts in
recent years, but a lot of that is down to the engine that Blanchett provides
and the simple fact that years of disappointment have encouraged us to lower
our expectations. The idea of Allen operating a more acerbic and serious mode
might be an appealing one to admirers of his Husbands and Wives, but it only
serves to prove how little the director relates to the way real people talk and
interact now. It's no coincidence, I think, that Allen's most recent success partly
took place in a fantasy world far removed from our own.
