Review of Blue Jasmine (2013) by Lasttimeisaw — 21 Jan 2014

Does Cate’s have the belated Oscar’s BEST LEADING ACTRESS in her bag? For a vanity-ridden, insolvent, over-the-hill trophy wife widow who just lost her fraudulent husband (who committed suicide in the prison) and desperately looks for an eligible replacement to get her upper-class life back on track in a Woody Allen’s film, it is not congruent with Cate’s majestic poise which we all kneel over, naturally I will be head over heels if she wins, but this year, my heart goes to Dame Judi Dench in PHILOMENA (2013), how often does the Academy honor the senior leading ladies? And no one deserves more than Dench among her peers, while Cate is at her prime and tons of opportunities await ahead.

Digress back to BLUE JASMINE, Allen returns to his homeland and the film is set at San Francisco, Jasmine (Blanchett) forfeited all her properties and bank savings after the passing of her husband’s Hal (Baldwin), returns to live with her sister Ginger (Hawkins), who is a working-class divorcée with 2 children. There are clashes between Jasmine and Ginger’s fiancé Chili (Cannavale), and a past wrangle of losing Ginger and her ex-husband Augie (Clay)’s lottery money scars the harmony between the sisters too.

The bumpy road of Jasmine’s readjustment into the new life style commingles with Jasmine’s high-end good old days, which grants Blanchett a full gamut of theatrical flexibility to sculpt a rather unsympathetic character from all possible (negative) angles, her shallowness, neuroticism, maliciousness, phoniness, obnoxiousness are all over the place, especially when the revelation unfolds near the end, what’s the odds for a wealthy wife to inform on her husband after discovering his chronic out-of-wedlock affairs? Not in real life but in Allen’s wishful thinking script, Once she grabs her status, it is no way she will squander everything out of a passion of betrayal, it is something every trophy wife should have learned by heart, what’s more unconvincing is that Blanchett can never be that stupid. A paralleled subplot of Ginger’s flirtation with a better suitor vehemently hints that things are not better for those lower class dreamers, reality bites.

The non-American Blanchett and Hawkins master in their American accent, Blanchett can never disappoint us, even under the most wretched situation, she is fiery and undefeated like a lioness will never capitulate. Meanwhile I’m more complacent for Hawkins’ hard-earned Oscar nomination, what a unique character actress she is, innocuous but vibrant with driving forces. Also an unsung hero among the cast is Cannavale, juggles with the siblings as the unsophisticated blue-collar labourer, who can be so blatant to snide at Jasmine’s ruin and question her faults and so volatile when going frantic with Ginger’s lapse and totally smitten with her when she retreats back to him.

Disregarding the overstated hubbub with A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951, 9/10), BLUE JASMINE is not Allen’s top-tier output, the script is far less from award-worthy and a satirical comedy, but its friendly orange tinge and eclectic jazz ditties could accompany you for a lazy high tea time with Jasmine babbling about her delusions of grandeur, life is comprised of continuous dramas, so just let’s laugh about it.