Review of Blue Jasmine (2013) by Shelbymcshelby — 20 Sep 2013

Baldwin and Blanchett are wonderful. The rest of the cast is good, too. The problem with this Woody Allen film is the incomplete story. Jasmine's exploration of life at the dentist's office, with the budding politician, her son or even her husband each ends without much discovery of something bigger than the sum of the action.

She dumps the dentist, gets dumped by her husband, gets dumped by the politician... and that's kind of it. The politician dumps her simply because he finds out, in one chance bumping into a character that informs him of Jasmine's lies about her former life.

That mechanism for moving forward in the story is a bit weak. There's nothing emotional for the audience to grasp onto to buy into it. It's just information. The politician could have acted any number of ways and we are non the wiser as to why his character and relationship with Jasmine isn't developed in that way.

Ebert used to complain about this kind of script where characters just announce what they're feeling or going to do, rather than have it unfold as story. There are many other instances of this kind of storytelling.

However, the potentials for a great Woody Allen movie are lurking throughout. Baldwin's character seems even to be more dimensional and nuanced than even Blanchett's though both have great characters to portray.

I wish Allen would have dispensed with the San Francisco travelogue (yes, he's guilty of characters ending up in iconic places that seem to go against their probably natural geography... ending up in South Park near downtown, wtf) and stayed in New York to develop Baldwin's character and story in all it's complex contradictions.

Instead of Blanchett telling about her embarrassment selling shows to her high society friends, it would have been more bittersweet, funny and sad to have actually seen that, rather than her and the dentist.