Blue Jasmine. (15.)
Directed by Woody Allen.
Starring Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K, Peter Sargaard and Andrew Dice Clay. 93 mins
Though he turns them out one a year, decade after decade, it is questionable how many actual Woody Allen films are out there. After the early funny ones a lot of them have been Woody Allen Has a Go At projects. He’s had various goes at being Bergman, Chekov, Dostoevsky, Fellini and now, in a bit of a stretch, he’s having a bash at doing a Tennessee Williams with this version of A Streetcar Named Desire with a contemporary Bernie Madoff twist.
Blanchett is his Blanche Dubois, Jasmine, flying into San Francisco to start rebuilding her life with her adopted sister Ginger (Hawkins) after a nervous breakdown. In flashback we see her idyllic former life in New York, the socialite wife of financial whizz, Baldwin, who is in fact a giant fraudster. The criminal investigation has left her penniless but hasn’t made a dent on her arrogance and air of superiority and she walks around with her nose in the air and her lips to a glass of vodka.
As ever with dramatic Allen, the dialogue and characterisation is basic and to-the-point. His scripts are like Alcoholic Anonymous meetings – the first thing out of everybody’s mouth has to be their whole life story. (It also has the standard Allen score of old jazz standard which have never sounded so disconnected and adrift from the film itself. This selection of tunes have no relevance to either the situations or the location, they just seem there to keep us corralled in the tight enclosure of Woody Allen land.)
It works because the actors are strong enough to breathe life into his thin creations. Hawkins and Baldwin do good work but it is Blanchett’s show. She is a hard performer to love; there is something merciless about her acting and she executes her flawless emotional repertoire with the cold precision of martial artist but this cold, regal perfection is exactly what the role calls for.
The film does though lack a decent Stanley Kowalski. Louis C.K. is vaguely seedy in his brief fling with Ginger but Cannavale and Dice Clay, who play her current lover and ex-husband, are big softies, even though they resemble the Italian American teamsters who hassled Allen outside the cinema in Annie Hall.
I should say what a perverse pleasure it is to see Andrew Dice Clay in a Woody Allen film. Back in the eighties he was most controversial stand up in America, pioneer of The Comedy of Hate, with an act that was like Jim Davidson meets the Fonz. He was the American equivalent of Jerry Sadowitz but while Sadowitz was a genuine misanthrope and adept comedian, Dice was just a big fat showbiz phoney desperate exploiting any avenue to be famous. (He wasn’t funny either.) His career crashed spectacularly but now, two decades on, it is cheering to see him earnestly tugging his forelock as the decent working class man in a Woody Allen. Showbiz redeems its own – I think I might put a bet on him to win an Oscar in the next ten years.
Directed by Woody Allen.
Starring Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K, Peter Sargaard and Andrew Dice Clay. 93 mins
Though he turns them out one a year, decade after decade, it is questionable how many actual Woody Allen films are out there. After the early funny ones a lot of them have been Woody Allen Has a Go At projects. He’s had various goes at being Bergman, Chekov, Dostoevsky, Fellini and now, in a bit of a stretch, he’s having a bash at doing a Tennessee Williams with this version of A Streetcar Named Desire with a contemporary Bernie Madoff twist.
Blanchett is his Blanche Dubois, Jasmine, flying into San Francisco to start rebuilding her life with her adopted sister Ginger (Hawkins) after a nervous breakdown. In flashback we see her idyllic former life in New York, the socialite wife of financial whizz, Baldwin, who is in fact a giant fraudster. The criminal investigation has left her penniless but hasn’t made a dent on her arrogance and air of superiority and she walks around with her nose in the air and her lips to a glass of vodka.
As ever with dramatic Allen, the dialogue and characterisation is basic and to-the-point. His scripts are like Alcoholic Anonymous meetings – the first thing out of everybody’s mouth has to be their whole life story. (It also has the standard Allen score of old jazz standard which have never sounded so disconnected and adrift from the film itself. This selection of tunes have no relevance to either the situations or the location, they just seem there to keep us corralled in the tight enclosure of Woody Allen land.)
It works because the actors are strong enough to breathe life into his thin creations. Hawkins and Baldwin do good work but it is Blanchett’s show. She is a hard performer to love; there is something merciless about her acting and she executes her flawless emotional repertoire with the cold precision of martial artist but this cold, regal perfection is exactly what the role calls for.
The film does though lack a decent Stanley Kowalski. Louis C.K. is vaguely seedy in his brief fling with Ginger but Cannavale and Dice Clay, who play her current lover and ex-husband, are big softies, even though they resemble the Italian American teamsters who hassled Allen outside the cinema in Annie Hall.
I should say what a perverse pleasure it is to see Andrew Dice Clay in a Woody Allen film. Back in the eighties he was most controversial stand up in America, pioneer of The Comedy of Hate, with an act that was like Jim Davidson meets the Fonz. He was the American equivalent of Jerry Sadowitz but while Sadowitz was a genuine misanthrope and adept comedian, Dice was just a big fat showbiz phoney desperate exploiting any avenue to be famous. (He wasn’t funny either.) His career crashed spectacularly but now, two decades on, it is cheering to see him earnestly tugging his forelock as the decent working class man in a Woody Allen. Showbiz redeems its own – I think I might put a bet on him to win an Oscar in the next ten years.
