Review: Blue Jasmine

Woody Allen returns home from his European tour with Blue Jasmine, an American story of one woman’s struggle to cope with the devastating after-effect of the collapse of her marriage and the discovery of her now deceased husband’s fraudulent activities. Played by Cate Blanchett, New York social butterfly Jasmine dumps herself on her sister’s doorstep in San Francisco and prepares to start her new life afresh. Easier said than done.

This is a very anxiety provoking film, but I think this is necessary to explore the entire range of Jasmine’s emotions as she comes to the realisation that life is not easy and happiness cannot be bought. We are constantly worrying and fretting – even when she herself is not worrying on screen during the frequent flashbacks, we see her in her former life and almost cry out to stop her from making those errors in judgement. Allen perfectly builds this tension, both within the character and the audience, without ever letting it boil over into raw screaming anger.

Blanchett herself is unerringly good in this film. The script, as always beautifully written by Allen, gives her the full range to work with – from chatting and tittering at social functions in New York to screaming and sweating in downtown San Francisco. As she went from one nervous breakdown to another you almost wanted to reach out and wipe her brow for her as she manically ranted away. This is perhaps one of the best-performed examples of an anxiety disorder I have seen in a film – Blanchett constantly makes us feel the character is on the edge and could go either way at any moment.

One of the lovely things that Woody Allen does is allow his actors to act by his use of the camera. He goes for extremely long single takes, sometimes even allowing characters to walk off and walk onto screen as they carry on talking. By using these long camera shots he allows the actors to explore every sentence and idea and lets them flow through each other – at times it almost felt like Blue Jasmine would be suited to being performed as a play.

A minor point against for me is Allen’s music in this film. It may just be me but the old saxophones in the background do tend to grind a little after a while – I perhaps would want something a bit more contemporary, for example as we explore downtown San Francisco with Jasmine and her sister.

Alec Baldwin plays the unlikeable Hal very well, Sally Hawkins is superb as the sister Ginger and Louie CK, one of my favourite comedians, has a brilliant role as a potential love interest. Blanchett steals every scene she enters though. She then steals it again, from herself, just because she can.

This is not the easiest film in the world to watch, however I do recommend you watch it. Woody Allen has impressed yet again.