31 Jan - 6 Feb 2014 #692

Blue jasmine

Sophia Pande

Woody Allen’s earlier personal life is pretty dodgy (after all it doesn’t get that much dodgier than starting a relationship with your 19-year-old daughter, albeit technically not biological, when one is 56). How then do we separate his works from his arguably questionable code of ethics?

While I raise this question as I write about Blue Jasmine I will not seek to answer them. I do, however, believe that when writing about Allen one ought to disclose at least that bit of essential information.

It is perhaps apt then that Allen has finally made a film about a character whose moral compass is quite wonky if not completely off in Jasmine French (Cate Blanchett), the eponymous character from the title of his latest film. Jasmine’s real name is Jeanette, and while she lives the swankiest of lives in a Park Avenue apartment, she comes from humble enough origins sharing her childhood with a sister named Ginger (the brilliant Sally Hawkins) who was adopted alongside Jasmine/Jeanette but was less favoured due to her bad genes (as opposed to Jasmine’s good genes).

The film cuts back and forth from Jasmine’s privileged past and subsequent downfall to her current existence, living at her sister’s humble but warm flat in San Francisco after having clearly suffered some sort of neurotic break.

Slowly as Jasmine manipulates her way through her current life, popping Xanax and chasing it with Vodka martinis we come to see how her previous existence deteriorated. From being exquisitely happy and married to a charming, astonishingly rich businessman named Hal (played perfectly by Alec Baldwin), Jasmine’s life implodes when Hal is arrested outside his office for investing and losing large amounts of other people’s investments a là Bernie Madoff.

We come to know Hal’s fate and Jasmine’s desperate grasping struggle to survive over the course of an uneven film with the standard clichés that Allen has lately so easily slid into – and yet I at least felt compelled to finish the film mainly due to the now much deservedly talked about performance by Blanchett who wavers between, vulnerable, execrable, beautiful, almost ugly but is never less than riveting onscreen in a difficult role that was perhaps even badly written, but which she managed to make her own.

Allen is no longer that man who made films like Manhattan (1977), Annie Hall (1979), and Hannah and her Sisters (1986) to name a few from those days when New York was his muse. Some of his recent films are unwatchable and while he continues to be prolific, it truly is hit or miss when going to see a Woody Allen film these days.

So while Blue Jasmine, quite rightly, was not selected for Best Picture this year by the Academy, Cate Blanchett deservedly has been recognised for her excellence with a nomination for Best Actress. If all goes well, she will be winning it this time.

Watch trailer: