If you've never seen 1951’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” - let me stop you right here. Go and find it, watch it, wait five years, and then watch “Blue Jasmine”.
For the rest of you, proceed with caution. All the accolades for Cate Blanchett allowed me to have over-high expectations. That said, not having read any reviews, it was a fun surprise that the whole thing was a modern recession-era retelling of “Streetcar”. (Sorry I spoiled that for you.) And this isn't mere allusion - it is more of a play-by-play.
Cate Blanchett is our modern Blanche Dubois - Jasmine, nee Janette. In this story, she is an ex-Park Avenue wife whose husband has gone to jail in the style of Bernie Madoff. He has committed suicide in jail, and, anyway, after repo men and a nervous breakdown she needs a fresh start. So she gets a first class ticket to San Francisco and obsessively blabs about her life to a stranger on a plane. She goes to live with her working class sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) in San Francisco. Jasmine is clearly uncomfortable in Ginger’s apartment (which is actually quite well-appointed). In flashback, we learn that it is rather shabby compared to Jasmine’s multi-mansion lifestyle she is used to.
Soon, we are introduced to Ginger’s boyfriend Chilli (Bobby Carnivale) and it is in his wildly insensitive treatment of Jasmine upon their first meeting that I first found myself feeling like I have seen this before. The inkling slowly grows until you find yourself playing a game of guessing how closely the two stories will parallel. (The answer...very.)
It’s a fun game. There are some modernizing touches which keep it fresh. (At no point does Chilli should “Giiiiiiingerrrrrr!, although he does rip a phone off the wall.) But, and this is going to sound really mean, it kind of smacks of a junior high assignment to update your favorite classic novel. Or - perhaps this is fairer - Hamlet set anywhere other than period Denmark.
There are some plotting and characterization issues. For instance, Jasmine does not know how to use a computer but has an iPhone. (Who else doesn't use a computer? Woody Allen.) The computer conceit allows for Jasmine to take a night course on computers - which itself has no real purpose. Also, it is thrown in that Jasmine and Ginger are both adopted and Ginger ran away. That is why Ginger is poor and Jasmine is was rich. We just need to accept this premise.
It’s like Woody Allen wants to bring us into his world from our own but is not willing to bridge the gap. Perhaps these are just the things we don’t hold against a Woody Allen movie. But it bums me out.
Cate Blanchett is great - a near dead-ringer for Vivianne Leigh’s Blanche. But I find all the hype around her performance puzzling. This is not a realistic portrayal of a woman having a breakdown. It is a skilled imitation of another person’s performance. Very, very skilled and with added depth. Blanchett keeps saying how grateful she is that Woody Allen creates great characters for women. But he didn't create Jasmine. Tennessee Williams did. It reminds me of her caricatured Katharine Hepburn from “The Aviator” - for which she won an Academy Award. There, she created a heightened version of Hepburn which was very enjoyable to watch and evoked a strong nostalgic response. In” Blue Jasmine”, she fleshes out Blanche’s descent into madness and Allen has added contextual details which explain its origins more fully. (Although, Streetcar was limited by mores of appropriateness - we will euphemistically say - which necessitated its vagueness and ambiguity.) It is a thrilling performance but I’m not sure it is significantly better than others in the current Oscar field.
Louis C.K. deserves a mention. He plays a small part as Ginger’s small-time affair away from from Chilli. He is very charming in a schmuck-ish kind of way that is right in Louis C.K’s wheelhouse. The actor would make a very good Woody Allen proxy in his next male-centered neurosis pic.
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