Jazmín Azul

I confess, I don't usually enjoy Woody Allen movies. There's too much fretting about relationships, and there's too much talking. This, however, was an unexpected, pleasant surprise. The key to the plot all devolves from Jasmine's marriage to a New York financial whiz of questionable integrity. Alec Baldwin hits the part out of the park which allows the movie to spend its quality time exploring the toxic relationship to wealth some people have.

The second most salient plot element is Jasmine's adoptive sister, Ginger, played by Sally Hawkins, who is as unforgettably effective as the other leads. As a guy, I've known women exactly like her, and I would be surprised if any woman in the audience didn't. The interaction between Ginger and Jasmine keeps the entire movie roiling. It involves her sister taking Jasmine in despite her having looked down on her since she became rich.

We're also treated to excellent performances in smaller roles by Andrew Dice Clay, and, my favorite, Bobby Cannavale, as Ginger's boyfriend, Chili. There's even more to be said about the acting than just these standouts that I won't include for the sake of brevity, but suffice it to say, it's all top notch.

The real payoff here is what Mr Allen is choosing to depict of those whose life is overly dependent on wealth. Woody Allen had always seemed fairly indifferent to wealth to me, so I imagined he wanted to protect those who had it, which put me off. But that's not the case here. Mr Allen is quite pointed about what's out there in terms of financial hazards, and how it can destroy lives.

As to Cate Blanchett there is something odd going on with her in this movie. I've seen many great performances by actresses, in particular, but never one that seemed as if the actress was somehow only devoting maybe 90% of her skill to a difficult role, and still she pulls it off brilliantly! That missing 10% is somehow not acting and with us, the audience, as her real self, quite conscious of the moment, and it's like spending time with an attractive woman. It's almost as if we're also actors and she's showing us only enough for us to see what she's capable of. She thinks she can trust us to understand where she's taking her performance, and somehow it works. This is the most wonderful acting by an actress I've seen this winter, a real delight, and I can't imagine her being bested at the Oscars.

So, in short, I'm surprised to find that this is my favorite Woody Allen movie for a variety of reasons, and I highly recommend it.

What a treat! Cate Blanchett gives a stunning performance as a Blanche-like character written and directed by the most prolific American author of the last 40 years. Cate seems to be an actress without emotional borders. Jasmine walks a very tight rope, her sense of despair etched in her magnificent face vanishes ipso facto when she meets Peter Sarsgaard. She realizes in a sort of disbelief -extraordinary, heartbreaking and horribly funny moment - that he could be the rescue raft in her own personal tsunami. Sally Hawkins, another stroke of genius in the casting department, is a profoundly human creature very much the Stella of the situation. This two sisters, adopted both from different parents are also from different, if immediately recognizable, universes. I could go on and on but I'm not going to, I just wanted to urge you, in this times of 3D super extra loud marvel sequels, to run and see it.

It's a great and unexpected surprise when Woody can beat both the Coens and the French these days in a film about delusion and self. I'm not a fan of his overall trajectory and predilections, but I won't deny any film its effectiveness.

Woody here pierces through to the essential thing. It's a film about modern suffering but that is clearly seen here as attachment to internal narrative, not just a general thickness around being. He maintains inextricability; it is both her fault and a life of circumstance with no clean separation. The woman still carries echoes of that previous narrative around her, soon it becomes clear that the explanatory flashbacks are hallucinated after the fact.

Overall Woody here arrives at a tender admission. It would be all too easy to discard or condemn her as pampered and sheltered, this is only part of the thrust here. He doesn't romanticize privilege the way Sofia Coppola is prone to, another plus: we're called to sympathize with more than a victim. The admission is that life in its course of being lived leaves indelible marks in the story of who you are, that this is only real to the extend that you inhabit the story, and yet that's it's genuinely hard to distinguish one self from the other.

He doesn't give this internal world to us with particular visual richness, few filmmakers his age do. There is 'color and shape', tied to the narrator's vivid imagination who aspires to be an 'interior designer', but Woody could have done so much more with the logic of memory. No, the real effect here is geared in the combination of asking the multilayered Blanchett to inhabit a character who inhabits and continuously recalls a story. She's marvelous. She seems to know the degree to which Jasmine blurs the recalled story to be only about color and appearances is the same one to which she blurs the current one, true love from convenience, responsibility from mere absent-mindedness, all these Blanchett truly, genuinely blurs around the character she inhabits.

It's deceptively easy to consume this thinking Jasmine knew in advance or was never in love, be aware and sensitive to this difference. It blooms once you reflect back on it, inhabit her world instead of pass through with moral superiority, because doing this means that your own tools of defining truth must be called into judgement.

It's a fine film, much better than the hollow inhabiting of his Midnight. This one cuts. A Woman Under the Influence appears to have been a template, Jasmine's muttering to herself on the street is a reference. Like that film, it is as much the filmmaker's as the actresses' creation, impossible without the richness Blanchett fleshes with.

Sometimes it feels like Woody Allen is deliberately hit and miss. Every other film appears to be a winner so it's become easy to just skip the mediocre ones. I thought Midnight In Paris was pretty good but I felt like its idea wasn't explored well enough and it became too repetitive. Blue Jasmine is a film that feels like it'll be another basic story at first then as the tragedy slowly unravels, it becomes all the more fascinating. At first the film's structure of flashbacking without transition is a little frustrating as the present time doesn't give you much to chew on in the first place, but it soon becomes clear that this was the only way to tell this brilliant and complex story of a woman's place in the world. Cate Blanchett is setting the reviews on fire and she certainly deserves it. I've always loved her engrossing theatrical style in films like The Aviator and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and I've missed her since.

Here she is in full force as she switches from glamour to glare seamlessly and effortlessly. Blanchett has often played strong women and she tiptoes the line of Jasmine's strength and vulnerability both with and without sympathy. It's incredible to watch. Although I was concerned I was going to only appreciate the performance and not connect with the character, I ended up finding her struggle to feel useful in the working world and not knowing how to achieve her ambitions to cut deep into the first world human anxieties about identity and self- worth. It's great to have a film that addresses those issues so earnestly, without feeling self- pitying. Although the spotlight is on her, there's plenty of room for the supporting players to shine with the delightful comic relief performances from Louis C.K., Michael Stuhlberg and Max Casella and deceptively charming performances from Alec Baldwin, Andrew Dice Clay and Peter Sarsgaard. The real talent on the side belongs to Sally Hawkins and Bobby Cannavale who give compelling and heartbreaking performances.

I like how Allen has such confidence in his shooting style of simple wides and closeups that he doesn't let it get in the way of the story but sometimes it does feel bland rather than just Woody's brand. It sometimes feels like the story is taking uninteresting broad strokes with its archetypes but when the details come in like a mystery novel, they enrichen the story and leave just before they drown you making you want more. Perhaps Allen could've made a better job of making me intrigued in the details but that makes the pay-offs all the more sweeter. However, I'm not quite sure what to make of the ending, perhaps Allen is trying to say there's some people who can and can't be fixed, I'm not sure, but it's a fascinating tragic comic tale nonetheless. Maybe it's intended as a punishment film regarding the sin of greed. That would make sense though it wouldn't be as satisfying. It's been compared to A Streetcar Named Desire a lot but I don't remember much of that story despite having seen it twice. I think I prefer Blue Jasmine. One of Allen's most unsuspecting heavyweight films in a long time.

8/10

I thought this was Woody Allen's best film in years. The script was better written than I expected from him at this point, given his more recent turns toward drama, and the laughs are often derived as much from the dark humor in the characters' situations as from snappy punch lines. Kudos to Cate Blanchett who turns in a stellar performance, actors sometimes broadly interpret Woody's neurotic characters for comedic effect, more the way Woody would play the role (think Judy Davis), but Cate very effectively plays it straight and my guess is she'll be taking home the next best actress Oscar. For me the biggest surprise was Andrew Dice Clay, who gives a surprising nuanced performance as a working class guy bitter about having been screwed over by big shots, and in some ways his character morally anchors the film. Good job, Woody.