BLUE JASMINE

BLUE JASMINE Review

By Darin Skaggs

     Woody Allen is a director who probably feels the need to keep working on a count he makes a movie every year.  Sometimes the film is a miss like Whatever Works and others hit the mark like Annie Hall, Vicki Christna Barsalona or his new film Blue Jasmine.

     Blue Jasmine tells the tale of a middle aged woman named Jasmine, played wonderfully by Cate Blanchett.  She is moving in with her sister Ginger, played by the great Sally Hawkins, due to Jasmine’s husband going to prison and eventually killing himself.  Her husband Hal, played by Alec Baldwin, is arrested for fraud which means before his arrest him and Jasmine lived in luxury.  Her sister is not living the high life.  She is divorced with two kids and they’re just getting by.  The two sisters try to get used to their new lives.

     The drive of the film is Jasmine and Blanchett carries the film the whole way through.  Her opening scene is Jasmine blabbering to an elderly woman on a plane.  The woman meets up with her husband and he asks if she knows Jasmine.  The woman replies that Jasmine was talking to herself, then started talking to her.  She spends the whole film going into these trances of talking to someone who isn’t there.  It is revealed throughout the film why she is like this and Blanchett is funny and sad in the role.

      The film is full of great characters.  Ginger is doing well on her own but still feels insignificant when talking to and about her sister.  She has a boyfriend that she seems perfectly happy with who is named Chili.  She becomes so captured with the negative thoughts about Chili coming from Jasmine that she cheats on him.   Jasmine says she is all out of money then complains about first class not being up to snuff.  Jasmine has been living a rich life so long that she does not know what “regular” life is like.  Hal is a jerk towards people who are lesser than him and other characters are bitter of them being less fortunate.

     At times the films motives seem to be a bit confusing.  Allen is rich just like the characters.  So is he trying to say that the rich have just as many problems as the middle class?  That is true but is he defending them or is he trying to find out what it would be like if he had to live a normal life.  Sometimes it feels more like Allen is trying to make us feel bad for the rich than feeling bad for all kinds of people.  This does not bruise the film too much because it is a nice exploration of mental illness and how it is caused.