Tweet
Blue Jasmine (2013)
Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Louis C.K., Peter Sarsgaard. Directed by Woody Allen.
Blue Jasmine is a film that offers hope for Woody Allen fans who hated Midnight in Paris and To Rome with Love, because this film is definitely not those films. It has many of the Allen signatures, with leaps between picturesque San Francisco and seductive New York City, jumps between present and past, and extended monologues by the film’s main character, Jasmine, played by Cate Blanchett.
Jasmine is a formerly wealthy New York socialite, formerly married to a wealthy businessman (Alec Baldwin). In the present, she is living in a less-than-posh apartment with her stepsister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and Ginger’s son. She’s enrolled in a computer class and working as a receptionist for a San Francisco dentist. How she got from there to here is the bulk of the story. How she’s going from here to THERE is the rest. The film rests on Allen’s storytelling and Blanchett’s acting.
Blanchett’s performance has been rightly praised, many critics comparing her to Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. I wouldn’t go that far, especially since I never loved the Tennessee Williams play, but it’s the kind of performance that makes you wonder what an actress has to put herself though in order to convince you that her character is making this journey. She’s pretty much guaranteed a Best Actress Oscar nomination. To offer a more specific evaluation would be to rob the viewer of the opportunity to discover it him- or herself.
Others in the cast perform almost as admirably, particularly Sally Hawkins as the step-sister and Louis C.K. as a love interest for one of the characters. But the whole cast is up to the task of creating the whirling sequence of events that put Jasmine where she ends up, and while it’s hard to call this a film anyone would enjoy, there is some enjoyment in tracing the spiraling paths of the innocent and guilty, not to mention the pleasure of observing an excellent actress as she does her thing. They say you’re not supposed to notice good acting, but here is a role where the good acting seems to be the point of the film, so not to notice it would be to doom it to failure. I don’t think it has anything to worry about.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
81/100 (Criticker rating)
Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Louis C.K., Peter Sarsgaard. Directed by Woody Allen.
Blue Jasmine is a film that offers hope for Woody Allen fans who hated Midnight in Paris and To Rome with Love, because this film is definitely not those films. It has many of the Allen signatures, with leaps between picturesque San Francisco and seductive New York City, jumps between present and past, and extended monologues by the film’s main character, Jasmine, played by Cate Blanchett.
Jasmine is a formerly wealthy New York socialite, formerly married to a wealthy businessman (Alec Baldwin). In the present, she is living in a less-than-posh apartment with her stepsister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and Ginger’s son. She’s enrolled in a computer class and working as a receptionist for a San Francisco dentist. How she got from there to here is the bulk of the story. How she’s going from here to THERE is the rest. The film rests on Allen’s storytelling and Blanchett’s acting.
Blanchett’s performance has been rightly praised, many critics comparing her to Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. I wouldn’t go that far, especially since I never loved the Tennessee Williams play, but it’s the kind of performance that makes you wonder what an actress has to put herself though in order to convince you that her character is making this journey. She’s pretty much guaranteed a Best Actress Oscar nomination. To offer a more specific evaluation would be to rob the viewer of the opportunity to discover it him- or herself.
Others in the cast perform almost as admirably, particularly Sally Hawkins as the step-sister and Louis C.K. as a love interest for one of the characters. But the whole cast is up to the task of creating the whirling sequence of events that put Jasmine where she ends up, and while it’s hard to call this a film anyone would enjoy, there is some enjoyment in tracing the spiraling paths of the innocent and guilty, not to mention the pleasure of observing an excellent actress as she does her thing. They say you’re not supposed to notice good acting, but here is a role where the good acting seems to be the point of the film, so not to notice it would be to doom it to failure. I don’t think it has anything to worry about.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
81/100 (Criticker rating)