Blue Jasmine
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Alec Baldwin,
Director: Woody Allen
Rating: 4/5
It has been a while since we have seen Cate Blanchett on the big screen, but now she is back with Blue Jasmine; the first time that she has collaborated with director Woody Allen.
The movie follows the title character Jasmine, who loses everything after her husband is arrested and jailed as a dirty and underhand businessman.
Jasmine goes from being a New York socialite to moving into her sister Ginger’s modest apartment in San Francisco. But with a fragile state of mind can she pull herself back together?
Cate Blanchett is one of those actresses who could read the phone book and be absolutely terrific, but she really does turn in a tour de force performance as the troubled Jasmine.
She is the reason that this whole movie works - as well as good writing of course. But in less experienced hands Jasmine could end up being a character that you don’t like because of the way that she behaves.
And yet Blanchett plays her in a way where you can’t help but feel sorry for her. Jasmine is a complex and interesting character as this film is really about her own self-destruction and fall from grace. She finds herself in her current position because she can’t truthfully look at her own life and the people in it.
This is a character that is charming, funny, lonely, pathetic, damaged, and brutal and Blanchett captures all of the different and contrasting facets with ease; it is not hard to see why she is currently the early favourite for the Best Actress Oscar.
A great support cast has been assembled around Blanchett, but it is Sally Hawkins who is really the stand out player.
Hawkins takes on the role of Ginger in the film, the less wealthy and the less glamorous sister of Jasmine. Ginger is a character who has lost at the hands of Jasmine’s husband and yet she is a character who is perhaps more content with her life; despite the fact that she could have had more.
Jasmine and Ginger - despite being sisters- are two completely different characters, and Blanchett and Hawkins make a really great acting team.
All of Woody Allen fans will be punching the air with this movie as it really is one of the best films that he has made in some time.
The writing is comic and dark and he has created these fascinating and flawed characters that you can’t help but be charmed by.
I don’t think that this is quite the masterpiece that everyone is claiming it to be, but it really is a compelling story with a potential Oscar winning performance at its core.
Blue Jasmine is out now.
