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One of this summer's most unlikely dynamite acting duke-outs comes courtesy of Woody Allen 's latest, "Blue Jasmine," a bicoastal drama with flashes of humor and transparent undertones of " A Streetcar Named Desire " that features the latest in the director's long line of compelling yet complicated leading ladies.

In this corner, joining the ranks of such delightfully difficult divas as Penelope Cruz (" Vicky Cristina Barcelona ") and Judy Davis (" Husbands and Wives "), is that thespian thunder from Down Under, Cate Blanchett . Swank and svelte in increasingly rumpled Chanel, she plays a disgraced, displaced and utterly delusional Manhattan socialite whose designer-brand lifestyle implodes after moving into her sister's downscale San Francisco home. 

In the opposite corner is Brooklyn-bred Andrew Dice Clay , that '80s-vintage foul-mouthed Fonzie, as Jasmine's burly blue-collar ex-brother-in-law. When Clay's Augie eventually crushes the hopes of Blanchett's Jasmine—much as her investment schemer husband, Hal ( Alec Baldwin , at home in slick slimeball mode), ruined Augie's financial dreams—it's as if you're watching Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski spar in an Almodovar film inspired by the travails of Ruth Madoff, wife of the infamous swindler to the stars.

Such oddball casting—heavy on big-galoot types, with an appearance by comic-of-the-moment Louis C.K.—is just one of the intoxicating reasons that Allen's latest annual offering to the cinema gods feels more substantial (a pet word tossed around by Blanchett's character) than some of his recent work. "Blue Jasmine" might have some disconnects in the plotting department, but its focus on the lies we tell ourselves and others just to get through each day packs a relevant punch.

Blanchett fabulously goes above and beyond her duties as the wilting faux flower of the title. From her sweat-drenched underarms during a particularly intense meltdown to her mesmerizing slit-eyed sensuality whenever Jasmine gets her way, the actress is a tour-de-force tinted-blonde tornado that elevates her every encounter with a member of the movie's estimable ensemble.

Basically, the Aussie Oscar winner, who just may get a chance at another trophy with this electric performance that makes an essentially despicable woman utterly fascinating as she sidesteps reality at every turn, does what few other Allen leads are able to do: Break through the artifice that often hangs over the director's films, much of it having to do with the distinctive comic cadence of his dialogue. It almost makes you forget you are watching a Woody Allen film, especially when the San Francisco scenes depict the dingy areas of the city beyond the realm of tourist traps.

The initial situation will prove irresistible for those who like a good culture clash between the classes. Fortified by fists full of Xanax, guzzles of vodka and an impressive set of Louis Vuitton luggage, a now-penniless Jasmine (formerly known as Janette) relies on the kindness not of strangers but of relatives: primarily, her forgiving and upbeat sister Ginger ( Sally Hawkins ). Ginger is a grocery store clerk with two young sons who gladly allows her snobbish sibling to swan around her cramped quarters as if she were visiting royalty. A lesser actress might be crushed by Blanchett, but the bouncy Brit also scores some triumphs as Ginger begins to question her own choices after Jasmine's arrival.

Meanwhile, mentally unstable Jasmine is haunted by the past and so is the film. As her muddled mind flashes back to her luxurious East Coast existence, she realizes that she regularly turned a blind eye to her husband's flaws as a relentless skirt-chaser as well as a heartless crook.

Eventually, Jasmine must lower her standards—she thinks she has the right stuff to be an interior designer, but can barely make it through a computer class so she can sign up for online courses—and takes a job as a dental receptionist, tacky posy-splattered smock included. That setup allows the director to provide the film's most horrifyingly amusing Allen-esque sequence: A repelled Blanchett squirming out of the sweaty embrace of her employer, a creep played to the hilt by Michael Stuhlbarg , who tries to romance Jasmine with an offer of nitrous oxide.

Allen sometimes fills in too many of the blanks. We are reminded again and again that Ginger and Jasmine are adopted children from different birth parents because they look nothing alike.

And sometimes not enough. Wouldn't a smooth operator like Peter Sarsgaard's dashing diplomat with political ambitions who falls for Jasmine's fabricated stories of her upscale lifestyle better investigate the woman he is dating?

No matter. A good Woody Allen flick is a thing of joy these days and, at times, "Blue Jasmine" is even a great one, close to being an equal to 2005's " Match Point ." Let us hope he never stops trying.

Susan Wloszczyna

Susan Wloszczyna spent much of her nearly thirty years at USA TODAY as a senior entertainment reporter. Now unchained from the grind of daily journalism, she is ready to view the world of movies with fresh eyes.

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Film credits.

Blue Jasmine (2013)

Rated PG-13

Cate Blanchett as Jasmine

Sally Hawkins as Ginger

Alec Baldwin as Hal

Peter Sarsgaard as Dwight

Louis C.K. as Al

Alden Ehrenreich as Danny

Andrew Dice Clay as Augie

Bobby Cannavale as Chili

Michael Stuhlbarg as Dr. Flicker

• Woody Allen

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Blue Jasmine Reviews

The one towering achievement of Blue Jasmine that is worth your attention is the lead performance of Cate Blanchett.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 16, 2024

Allen has made an unforgettable character study of a fascinating, despicable, sympathetic, and engaging figure and those around her.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 25, 2022

Blanchett visualizes her struggles through every fidget, every bead of sweat, and every outburst. She’s not a likable character by any stretch but she’s simply mesmerizing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 19, 2022

Cate's performance is something all its own, splitting the seams of what might have been something entirely else, in somebody else's hands

Full Review | Jul 2, 2021

Blue Jasmine is essentially a careless, mean-spirited piece.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2021

Darker than most of Allen's recent output, Blue Jasmine doesn't go for laughs - very often anyway - but is an astutely crafted psychological character study.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 31, 2021

Purposefully structuring a film to deprive viewers of a precise beginning, middle, and end is a risky game that doesn't always pay off.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 3, 2020

Blanchett is the true author of Blue Jasmine. It's a towering performance that remains fixed on your brain.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Sep 4, 2020

The film ultimately depends upon and is rewarded by Cate Blanchett's insightful and emotionally resonant performance as Jasmine.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 3, 2020

Jasmine could have been the same neurotic type we've seen in previous Woody Allen films, but Blanchett makes the character just as much her own creation as it is his.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 24, 2020

With 'Blue Jasmine', Allen reaches another new mark in his legendary directorial career, delivering one of his best dramas in recent years. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 25, 2020

Cate Blanchett is over the moon in the best Woody Allen drama since Match Point.

Full Review | Jun 19, 2020

Blanchett, channeling Lauren Bacall, is so genuinely affecting that she may as well have been some tragically elegant Tennessee Williams' victim transported into the midst of Allen.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2019

It's the kind of performance Oscars are made of, but beyond any thought of awards or accolades, Blanchett delivers a once-in-a-lifetime kind of achievement.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 8, 2019

An efficacious character study of somebody truly fallen.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 4, 2019

Though Allen opted to not endow Blue Jasmine with his travelogue visual flare that I've grown fond of, Blanchett provides so much to chew on and gawk at that she single-handedly makes the film a certifiably significant work.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.4/10 | Apr 12, 2019

This may be Blanchett's best performance of her career in a film that is one of Allen's better works in recent memory.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Apr 9, 2019

The fact that a film with this depth of tragedy works, despite being billed as a comedy, is a tribute to the brilliant performances of the cast and one of the most polished pieces of direction by Allen in recent times.

Full Review | Mar 20, 2019

Blanchett is a true force of nature; sozzled, depressed and on the verge of madness, it's the best work of her career.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 5, 2019

There are the raw materials for a piercing American tragedy, detailing the corrosive hubris of a certain type of moneyed class, but a far more studied and icier eye is needed.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 3, 2019

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Blue jasmine: film review.

Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin and Louis C.K. star in the writer-director's fine character study.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Cate Blanchett scored a great theatrical success four years ago as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire . But rather than preserving her performance in a new film version of the play, as some suggested, she’s gone a different route, creating a modern emotional sister of downward-spiraling Blanche in Woody Allen ‘s fine character study Blue Jasmine . Going beyond the urban neuroses that are standard equipment for inhabitants of Allen’s world, Jasmine is stricken by a life reversal so severe that her ability to ever cope with it becomes genuinely questionable, to the point of tragedy. Although marred by a couple of too-convenient plot contrivances, this often humorous drama lands firmly in the plus column among the Woodman’s recent works, with Blanchett’s tour de force making this a must-see for the cognoscenti and a likely mid-range earner by the director’s standards.

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Quite apart from the central performance, this is also a film that prompts the response: Woody Allen and Andrew Dice Clay , whoda thunk it? In fact, the lugs in the life of Jasmine’s lower-class sister are played by Clay, Bobby Cannavale and Louis C.K. , which contributes a vivid emphasis on class and financial distinctions that doesn’t usually enter Allen’s field of vision.

The Bottom Line Cate Blanchett is neurotically golden in another memorable female character study from Woody Allen.

VIDEO: Woody Allen’s ‘Blue Jasmine’ Trailer: Cate Blanchett in Crisis

And the divide could hardly more pronounced than it is between the former and current circumstances faced by Jasmine, a fortyish blond beauty who once ruled the New York social roost as the wife of billionaire financier Hal ( Alec Baldwin ) and has now been reduced to pennilessness and disgrace with the collapse of her husband’s empire and his suicide in prison.

The two worlds are sharply contrasted through the film’s intercutting of past and present. When first seen, Jasmine is in first class on a plane heading to San Francisco, but her ultimate destination is a small apartment in a dodgy part of town where, as a last resort, she’ll stay with her grocery-bagger sister Ginger ( Sally Hawkins ). Biologically, they aren’t actually related, as both were adopted from different sets of birth parents, with Jasmine drawing the winning genetic hand in all departments. Needing a drink in her hand at all times, Jasmine confesses to have had a nervous breakdown and is still experiencing persistent aftershocks, insisting, “I can’t be alone.”

Unfortunately for her, that means being surrounded by Ginger, who extends herself as generously as she can; her two noisy young sons; ex-husband Augie (Clay), a low-life handyman who blames Jasmine for his own dismal financial straits, and her hot-headed new boyfriend Chili (Cannavale), who, as Jasmine can’t help but point out, seems to be no improvement on Augie.

Jasmine’s current Tennessee Williams -like fragility is effectively contrasted with and foreshadowed by incisive flashbacks to her well-heeled Manhattan lifestyle, where she may have been neurotic but was also massively pampered by her husband and felt in control of her glamorous if circumscribed world. Having no reason to be suspicious of her husband’s business practices, she also turned a blind eye to the smooth operator’s extramarital dalliances. Very much a Ruth Madoff figure (even to the point of moving in with her sister), Jasmine was utterly blindsided when her house of cards fell apart.

PHOTOS: ‘To Rome With Love,’ in New York: Woody Allen Celebrates His Latest in His Hometown

In desperation, she takes a job as a receptionist for a dentist ( Michael Stuhlbarg ), who turns out to be a lech, and tries to learn computer skills while setting her sights on a career in interior design, something to which she might actually be suited. But when Ginger meets a new man (Louis C.K.) whom Jasmine thinks might represent a step up for her sister, Chili goes ballistic, making domestic life for everyone nearly unbearable.

The New York interludes, upscale even by Allen’s standards, are glibly entertaining and to the point, illustrating Hal’s fast-shuffling business dealings and discreet assignations on the one hand and Jasmine’s self-absorbed obliviousness on the other. The San Francisco scenes underscore how the chaos, combativeness and aggressiveness triggered by the working-class men in Ginger’s orbit exacerbate Jasmine’s condition. Not that being left alone would be any better, far from it for this woman whose whole world, including her son, has vanished overnight, leaving her hanging by the most slender thread.

Possible salvation finally turns up in the agreeable form of Dwight ( Peter Sarsgaard ), a debonair diplomat and widower whose amorous attentions are are sincere as Jasmine’s needs are desperate. But this golden opportunity only serves to illuminate that her problems may rest less in what’s been done to her than, as with Streetcar ‘s Blanche, in a fundamental propensity for self-deception that may prove inescapable. The conclusion is startling and feels entirely right.

Would that the same could be said of some of Allen’s plotting. The writer-director’s film-per-year fertility with original screenplays is unrivaled and enormously impressive, but just a few days devoted to a final polish might have dealt with the too-easy manner in which some climactic chance revelations are handled. In outright comedies, such contrivances are not only excusable but often welcome as part of the artificial fabric, but in mixed-tone works such as this that are meant to be plausible, they come off as lazy.

Still, this in no way detracts from the dramatic legitimacy and layered texturing of Blanchett’s performance, which lies at the center of the film and defines its achievement. Brittle, sophisticated, myopic about the world at large and without sufficient emotional underpinnings to cope when the rug’s pulled from under her, Jasmine rates with any of the numerous other major female characters Allen has written over the decades just as it reflects aspects of some of them, notably in Alice, Another Woman and Husbands and Wives.

Hawkins’ under-achieving Ginger is perhaps as much burdened by deficiency of imagination as Jasmine is by an over-abundance of it; in her second turn for Allen, the British actress is winningly self-effacing. Clay and Cannavale are right on the money as easily affronted goombahs with grudges against Jasmine, while Louis C.K. puts his own stamp on some very Allen-esque lines. Baldwin wears his handsome Wall Street weasel like a glove, and Sarsgaard cuts a figure for Jasmine that properly does seem too good to be true.

Opens: July 26 (Sony Pictures Classics) Production: Perdido Productions Cast: Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Louis C.K., Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tammy Blanchard, Max Casella, Alden Ehrenreich Director: Woody Allen Screenwriter: Woody Allen Producers: Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum, Edward Walson Executive producers: Leroy Schechter, Adam B. Stern Director of photography: Javier Aguirresarobe Production designer: Santo Loquasto Costume designer: Suzy Benzinger Editor: Alisa Lepselter PG-13 rating, 98 minutes

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Review: Why Woody Allen’s ‘Blue Jasmine,’ Starring Cate Blanchett, Is His Most Significant Movie In Years

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Carried by Cate Blanchett in a deservedly hyped powerhouse turn, “Blue Jasmine” features the actress as the spoiled housewife of a wealthy Madoff-like schemer (Alec Baldwin) who commits suicide in prison. Left with nothing, she crashes with her estranged sister in San Francisco ( Sally Hawkins ) while rambling about potential ways of putting her life back together. Revealed in a series of opening shots chatting aimlessly about her woes to a shocked passenger on her flight to San Francisco, Jasmine sounds like yet another fast-talking avatar for Allen’s voice. Within minutes, she has unleashed rants about her adopted sister and both of their ex-husbands, her lack of trust for doctors and managed to quote Horace Greeley. Walking away from Jasmine, her fellow passenger laments, “she couldn’t stop babbling about her life.”

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So it goes with Allen’s infinitely self-conscious creations, but “Blue Jasmine” takes that mold to a more frantic extreme. On the surface, it has all the hallmarks of an Allen comedy: the classic jazz underscoring virtually every scene, the speedy dialogue, and insular references to posh Manhattan lifestyles. However, Allen frames these ingredients with an ironic twist. Jasmine is the sort of character who once inhabited the makings of a cheery Allen comedy about the lifestyles of the rich and famous before her world crashed down. In her past as a trophy wife, which Allen slowly explores in a series of flashbacks running parallel to the contemporary events, Jasmine exists in a bubble of sunny bliss that forms a startling contrast to her current damaged state.

Watching these two experiences unfold simultaneously leads to one of the more intriguing storytelling devices Allen has used in quite some time. As a colleague pointed out to me, the approach echoes Allen’s lesser “Melinda and Melinda,” where a group of playwrights contemplate the prospects of telling the same story as both comedy and drama. While in that case the gimmick was a distraction, in “Blue Jasmine” the dramatic sensibility criticizes expectations of buoyant wit. Naturally, Allen turns to jazz for a key ingredient that percolates throughout the narrative. Jasmine routinely goes back to the song “Blue Moon,” as it reminds her of her ill-fated courtship. “I used to know the words,” she sighs. “Now they’re a jumble.” One could apply the same description to this tantalizing recalibrating of previous Allen movies into a less predictable whole.

Still, Allen’s increasingly anachronistic dialogue and largely unadventurous style remain a troublesome distraction. More than anything else, “Blue Jasmine” is driven by Blanchett, the movie’s true auteur. “You hire her and get out of the way,” Allen said in a widely circulated interview, although he’s actually done the opposite: Constantly framing her in extreme close-ups, he places her skill under the microscope, and Blanchett ably meets the challenge. Tasked with a throwaway line involving the ordering of a Stoli martini with a hint of lime, she conveys shocking depths of sadness with the slightest twitch in her eye. Later, conveying a panic attack during the scene that recounts the end of her marriage, she delivers some of the most intense physicality onscreen this year.

The rest of the cast is underutilized but just as strong. Hawkins capably buries her British accent with credible New York sass and a coy grin masking her own insecurities. Bobby Carnavale, playing her on-again-off-again boyfriend, lands a terrific freakout scene of his own. Peter Sarsgaard , Louis CK and Michael Stuhlbarg all crop up as potential suitors for both women, doing as much as they can with the limited material to wrestle with its ambiguous genre ingredients.

But “Blue Jasmine” belongs to Blanchett, who appears in almost every scene and frees it from the limitations of Allen’s style, pushing it to far sharper results than any of the more traditional movies, good and bad, that he’s churned out in the past dozen or so years. It’s the rare occasion where the filmmaker’s hands-off approach to directing performances pays off. Generally speaking, Allen attracts stars because his movies give actors a chance to experience living inside his self-made universe of neuroses. With few exceptions, his movies feel like different versions of the same old song. In “Blue Jasmine,” however, the instruments play themselves.

Criticwire grade : B+

HOW WILL IT PLAY? Sony Pictures Classics releases “Blue Jasmine” next Friday. With Allen’s movie generally performing well in limited release, especially when they receive good reviews , the movie’s prospects are fairly strong. Buzz for Blanchett’s performance should elevate its profile during awards season.

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Film Review: ‘Blue Jasmine’

Cate Blanchett plays a neurotic Woody Allen heroine for the ages in this serious-minded but ruefully funny work.

By Justin Chang

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San Francisco has been good to Woody Allen , from his 1969 directing debut with “ Take the Money and Run ” to his lead turn in 1972’s “Play It Again, Sam,” and a long-overdue return visit provides just the shot of artistic adrenaline he needs in “ Blue Jasmine .” It doesn’t hurt that this serious-minded but ruefully funny work is centered around a mesmerizing performance by Cate Blanchett as a neurotic Allen heroine for the ages, a desperate New York socialite who heads West after losing her husband and their ill-gotten fortune. Probing the allure of romantic fulfillment and upward mobility with rigor, emotional generosity and a pleasing sense of dramatic balance, this Sony Classics release won’t do “ Midnight in Paris “-sized numbers, but solid critical response should pull in more than just the Woodman faithful.

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Following the frivolities of “Midnight in Paris” and “ To Rome With Love ,” Allen makes an invigorating return to American soil with a meaty, fully realized drama that cleverly functions as both an update of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and a satire on One Percent excess. And while “Blue Jasmine” is rather less idyllic than the writer-director’s previous creative high point, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” it superficially recalls that 2008 comedy in charting the fortunes of two women, a blonde and a brunette, pursuing their very different goals in life. Yet Blanchett’s performance is so dominant in terms of screentime and emotional impact that the film succeeds as not only a virtuoso ensemble piece, but also an unflinchingly intimate study of the character in the title.

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The fact that Jasmine sometimes still uses her birth name, Jeanette, provides an early clue that this is a woman with a talent for self-invention — someone who can’t help but delude herself and others, and who doesn’t mind turning a blind eye to those inconvenient realities that might threaten her life of privilege. That privilege has been yanked away from Jasmine as she arrives in San Francisco, evidently broke and single, and moves in with her sister, Ginger ( Sally Hawkins ).

That the girls were adopted from different sets of biological parents explains their lack of resemblance, in looks and temperament. While laid-back, free-spirited Ginger works at a supermarket, has two rowdy kids from a previous marriage, and is engaged to a macho, greasy-haired tough named Chili ( Bobby Cannavale ), Jasmine is clearly made of classier stuff, or so she thinks. Regular flashbacks reveal her life of luxury in the Hamptons with her businessman husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin), who turned out to be as chronically unfaithful to her as he was to his investors. Among the many victims of his Madoff-like schemes were Ginger and her then-husband, Augie (actor-comedian Andrew Dice Clay ), who made the mistake of entrusting Hal with $200,000 in lottery winnings.

The contrast between past and present begins to feel almost unbearably cruel as Jasmine is forced to pull herself up by her bootstraps, not an easy task for someone accustomed to Jimmy Choos. Eventually she begins working as a receptionist for a lecherous dentist ( Michael Stuhlbarg ) and taking computer classes, the first steps toward a highly improbable career in interior design. Yet far from humbling or inspiring her, hard work seems to make her only more pinched, whiny and abrasive, and as she compulsively mixes martinis and Xanax, she becomes ever more critical of the easily contented Ginger and her “loser” boyfriend.

While the New York flashbacks occasionally veer toward overstatement, they convey more than mere backstory, providing a psychological entry point as Jasmine becomes more and more unglued with every painful reminder of what she’s lost. Quivering with barely repressed rage, at times muttering to herself as she stares blankly into the void, Jasmine instantly takes her place among the most dynamic female protagonists in the Allen oeuvre, which is no small feat. It’s a brilliantly bipolar piece of acting, bringing an almost Method rawness to the writer’s typically refined dialogue, and what gives Blanchett’s performance such force is how expertly she modulates her character’s mood swings: One minute she’s a pill-popping, bleary-eyed wreck, the next she’s a vision of radiant, sylphlike elegance (especially in an array of stunning outfits designed by Suzy Benzinger), cozying up to a handsome diplomat ( Peter Sarsgaard ) who may hold the key to her future.

It becomes clear that while Jasmine scarcely deserves her fantasy world of effortless, extravagant wealth, it’s a world she absolutely belongs to and thrives in. Our sympathies are artfully scrambled; we begin to root for this over-entitled, self-destructive shrew to find love and lucre in spite of herself, lending the story a certain train-wreck fascination as it barrels toward its bitterly ironic conclusion.

The script takes a similarly complex view of its secondary characters, and what gives “Blue Jasmine” its particular integrity is its acknowledgment that, despite their obvious differences in sophistication, taste and socioeconomic background, every one of these folks may have a point. Allen’s sense of class stratification here isn’t exactly nuanced, but his sympathies are more evenly distributed than usual, and he happily reveals more than one side to every personality, a strategy that helps bring out the best in a very fine cast.

Inclined as one might be to condescend to coarse, working-class Joes like Chili and Augie (the names here are especially pungent and evocative), the film duly acknowledges that these dudes are far more admirable than their upscale counterparts, a point that Cannavale and Clay (an especially offbeat and rewarding casting choice) underscore with their mouthy, big-hearted performances. The other male roles have been cast with similar care: Baldwin, back for more after “To Rome With Love,” is almost too persuasive as a Wall Street sleaze; Louis C.K. is likable as a guy who takes a particularly randy interest in Ginger; and Alden Ehrenreich makes a welcome appearance as Hal’s Ivy Leaguer son. But besides Blanchett, it’s Hawkins who leaves the strongest impression as the sensitive and sensible Ginger, deflecting her sister’s attacks with endless patience and the occasional well-deserved telling-off. It’s the less flashy of the two roles, but Hawkins inhabits it with a graceful, unshowy depth of feeling.

While Allen displays more interest than usual in the particulars of lower-income living and even deigns to usher some of his characters into the computer age, the result can’t help but feel at times like a somewhat cushy, elevated Woody-world fantasy of workaday existence. Even Ginger’s Mission District apartment, meant to seem cramped in comparison to Jasmine’s beachside estate, looks relatively spacious considering the location. Along similar lines, Javier Aguierresarobe’s sun-dappled lensing can’t help but show off San Francisco to great advantage, as the film makes time for a walk along Ocean Beach, an amble through Chinatown, and a brief, obligatory shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. The old jazz standard “Blue Moon” makes a poignant main theme for this tale of romantic longing.

Reviewed at Sony Studios, Culver City, Calif., July 16, 2013. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 98 MIN.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Classics release and presentation in association with Gravier Prods. of a Perdid production. Produced by Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum, Edward Walson. Executive producers, Leroy Schecter, Adam B. Stern. Co-producer, Helen Robin. Co-executive producer, Jack Rollins.
• Crew: Directed, written by Woody Allen. Camera (color, widescreen), Javier Aguierresarobe; editor, Alisa Lepselter; production designer, Santo Loquasto; art directors, Michael Goldman (San Francisco), Douglas Huszti (New York); set decorators, Kris Boxell (San Francisco), Regina Graves (New York); costume designer, Suzy Benzinger; sound (Dolby Digital), Nelson Stoll (San Francisco), Thomas Varga (New York); supervising sound editor, Robert Hein; re-recording mixers, Lee Dichter, Hein; visual effects supervisor, Jake Braver; visual effects, Phosphene, Prime Focus, Method Studios; assistant director, John M. Morse; casting, Juliet Taylor, Patricia DiCerto.
• With: Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Louis C.K., Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tammy Blanchard, Max Casella, Alden Ehrenreich.

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Blue Jasmine

A New York socialite, deeply troubled and in denial, arrives in San Francisco to impose upon her sister. She looks like a million dollars but isn't bringing money, peace or love. A New York socialite, deeply troubled and in denial, arrives in San Francisco to impose upon her sister. She looks like a million dollars but isn't bringing money, peace or love. A New York socialite, deeply troubled and in denial, arrives in San Francisco to impose upon her sister. She looks like a million dollars but isn't bringing money, peace or love.

• Woody Allen
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• 520 User reviews
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• 55 wins & 83 nominations total

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• Trivia Because Woody Allen doesn't get into motivation or background of a character when he's directing actors, Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins got together and invented the background for the sisters' relationship. So every scene when they talked about their past, although it's vague on the script and for the viewer, they both knew exactly what the sisters are talking about.
• Goofs When Ginger, Jasmine, Chili and Eddie are at the clams restaurant, Eddie asks Jasmine what would she be if she had finished her education. She answers, "An anthropologist". Eddie ignorantly asks, "Really, digging up fossils?" Jasmine replies mockingly: "That's an archaeologist". She is wrong. The correct answer would be, "That's a paleontologist". Jasmine is belittling Eddie for his ignorance, but she is in fact displaying ignorance herself.

Matthew : Mom said you used to be okay, but you got crazy.

Johnny : Yeah, and then you talked to yourself.

Jasmine : Well, there's only so many traumas a person can withstand until they take to the streets and start screaming.

• Connections Featured in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Episode #21.188 (2013)
• Soundtracks Back O'Town Blues Composed by Louis Armstrong & Luis Russell Performed by Louis Armstrong and the All-Stars Courtesy of The Verve Music Group Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

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• Jan 29, 2014
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• August 23, 2013 (United States)
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• $18,000,000 (estimated)
• $33,405,481
• Jul 28, 2013
• $99,104,804

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• Runtime 1 hour 38 minutes
• Dolby Digital
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• Dolby Surround 7.1

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Film review: Blue Jasmine - Magnificent and monstrous Cate Blanchett helps Woody Allen blossom again

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Late period Woody Allen movies have tended to arrive on the understanding that, though they may offer flashes of the wit, pathos and psychological acuity of his early work, they’ll never match up to Manhattan or Annie Hall. Blue Jasmine is proof that Allen’s powers are merely fluctuating, not in terminal decline: it’s his most assured, affecting work in years.

There’s no shaking the overtones of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire in the opening scenes, as Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) – a broke but snooty New York socialite, still flying first class – arrives at her sister Ginger’s modest apartment in San Francisco, parks her vast collection of Louis Vuitton luggage in the tiny sitting room, and hits the nearest bottle.

Recently recovered from a breakdown, she teeters on the edge of sanity. In flashbacks, we see her enjoying the gilded Park Avenue existence afforded by her husband Hal’s fortune, until it becomes clear that the cash comes from rampant, white-collar criminality. Meanwhile, in her post-downfall present, she half-strives, half-refuses to accept her predicament, relying on Ginger, yet disdaining her lower-class lifestyle.

Blanchett has played Williams’ Blanche Dubois to raves on Broadway, and she’s magnificent as Jasmine: by turns monstrous and pitiable, never aiming for cheap sympathy or an easy laugh, though she earns some laughs all the same. Hers will be the performance to beat come awards season, and she is surrounded by Allen’s customarily excellent supporting cast.

As Ginger, the wonderful Sally Hawkins is the trusting heart of the tale, while Alec Baldwin is a sleek fit for the despicable Hal. Bobby Cannavale is winning as Chili, Ginger’s loudmouth, sub-Stanley Kowalski mechanic boyfriend, who remains morally intact despite Jasmine’s avowed disgust.

It’s telling that Chili and Ginger’s ex, Augie (Andrew Dice Clay), are not only the most conspicuously working-class characters in the film, but also the most noble. While the simplicity of his satire of the social divide may be deliberate, neither Allen’s portrayal of the super-rich, nor of the working class, rings entirely true.

The honourable grease-monkey, the Martini-sloshing socialite, the linen-suited diplomat: Allen appears to have been living in a romantic Manhattanite bubble long enough to become almost as divorced from reality as Jasmine – or as the protagonist of his last good movie, Midnight in Paris , whose idea of the world was nothing but an outdated hallucination. Blue Jasmine is unmistakably a film of 2013, but by a great filmmaker from another time.

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Summary After everything in her life falls to pieces, including her marriage to wealthy businessman Hal, elegant New York socialite Jasmine moves into her sister Ginger’s modest apartment in San Francisco to try to pull herself back together again. [Sony Pictures Classics]

Directed By : Woody Allen

Written By : Woody Allen

Blue Jasmine

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Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine”

It’s obvious from “Blue Jasmine” that Woody Allen has been to Hell; what’s more, he imagines some of the neighborhoods there that he was spared from visiting. It’s a movie about pain and loss—and specifically, it tests the limits of the bearable, particularly among those who have never had to bear much. In a peculiarly negative and inverted way, the movie displays Allen’s own lifeboat in a sea of trouble and shows what happens when someone doesn’t have one of her own. The subject is the idle rich, the problem is idleness, the crisis is self-delusion in the face of fear and despair, and the basic material of the movie is the definition of identity. And, as it turns out, Allen’s vision of a modern-day Job is simply someone without a job.

His protagonist, Jasmine, played by Cate Blanchett, is a middle-aged woman with a sheen of prosperity who, because she has nowhere else to go, shows up at the modest San Francisco apartment of her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Jasmine, who grew up as Jeanette, had known comfort and leisure since her marriage to Hal (Alec Baldwin), a wizard of finance brought down, in public shame, by shady, Madoff-like schemes. Hal ended up in jail; their son, Danny (Alden Ehrenreich), has repudiated her; and, having emerged from a mental institution needing to rebuild her life, she repairs to San Francisco, where Ginger has agreed to take her in.

Allen has crafted a masterwork of construction. His writing is pointed and lucid, aphoristic and exemplary. He brings out the elaborate backstory through deftly crafted flashbacks that serve as strong a psychological and thematic purpose as a narrative one—to fill the present with the past. It’s a movie that—for better and for worse—builds its characters from parts that seem pregnant with action and situations that beg for resolution; the movie seems made to be recalled and described.

The sisters’ relations have long been tense. They’re adoptive siblings; Jasmine had always been the golden girl of the family, and Ginger, who works as a supermarket cashier, cheerfully—surprisingly cheerfully—accepts her relationship with her sister despite decades of condescension and worse. Ginger and her ex, Augie (Andrew Dice Clay), lost a two-hundred-thousand-dollar windfall through their investment with Hal. Unlike Ginger, Augie, who had planned to use the money to start a business, has no forgiveness in him.

The spring of a plot coils tighter through the practical stages of Jasmine’s struggle to regain a place on earth. First, she needs a job, and she gets one as a receptionist to a dentist (Michael Stuhlbarg), which doesn’t go so well. Second, she needs an ambition, and, prompted by Ginger’s admiration for her taste, she decides to study for an interior decorator’s license. Third, she meets Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard), a rich, accomplished, ambitious man and—concealing her past from him—decides to hitch her wagon to his rising star. Meanwhile, Ginger’s own romantic life takes a turn, seemingly for the better, through Jasmine’s confident influence.

Reviewing the movie in the magazine this week, David Denby rightly described Allen’s directorial approach as “curt and decisive—a ‘late’ style, if there ever was one.” Allen has been working in this spare, sketchlike way since “Match Point,” the great liberation of his later abstract turn. It’s as if, delivering himself from the thick textures of daily life—and the particulars of his own experience—he has gone straight to his ideas. These later movies fall into two patterns. There’s Analogue Woody, as in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “Match Point,” and, now, “Blue Jasmine”; and Symbolic Woody, as in “To Rome with Love,” “Scoop,” and “Midnight in Paris”; and two movies that resemble the former but function like the latter, “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” and “Cassandra’s Dream” (which is one of his very greatest films). The difference is simple: the former films are stories of motives, the latter, stories of theories. The former emphasize writing as a way of exemplifying character; the latter films use situations and devices to embody ideas. The former depend on actors as dramatic delivery systems; the latter present actors as opaque figures of gesture.

From these descriptions, my preferences are obvious. Allen’s dependence on his actors’ performances is highlighted in Blanchett’s interpretation of Jasmine. The character’s moments of forceful emotional violence come off as constructed of its pieces; their wildness seems forced and shows the gears of an actor’s preparation and decision-making. By contrast, Blanchett’s sequences of quiet, frayed agony rise to an exaltedly high dramatic pitch. They feel like scenes from a play, and the actress takes sublime interpretive hold of them.

But the very dramatic power, the overwhelming compassion for Jasmine at her moments of intimate devastation, gets in the way of Allen’s strongest and most dangerous vision. Jasmine has lost her public identity—indeed, has become something of a pariah. She has lost her money, and she has to find something to do. Like Jasmine née Jeanette, Allen, of course, also endured (in the early nineties) the shattering of his public identity and a barrage of hostility; like her, he was rejected by one of his children in the wake of scandal. (And, like her, he is known to the world under a pseudonym.) But Allen didn’t lose his money and he didn’t lose his ability to work; he didn’t struggle and strive to recover his former status, because he was able to simply keep going forward—and the artistic results have often been wondrous.

In Allen’s earlier movies, the realistic texture, the sense that he was depicting his own milieu (as hermetic as it may have seemed) and transforming details from his own life, often conflicted with his idealizing tendencies: when he wanted to say something, he said it himself, on-screen. That made for their splendid, spontaneous modernism—but also often left me feeling that there was either too much of him there, or, much more often, too little. His highly accomplished films of the eighties sometimes felt as if they had grown respectable; I was waiting for him to break out.

With “Husbands and Wives,” he broke out, though only briefly, and it took more than another decade—and a drastic change in the circumstances under which his movies were produced—to effect his most recent flourish. “Blue Jasmine” is, in many ways, among Allen’s most (that word again) accomplished films. Here, in a highly refracted and filtered way, he faces some of his most traumatic experiences—even while suggesting that he was spared their most harrowing implications. He shows that he’d be lost, to the point of madness, if he lost the ability to make movies—or maybe just his money. He distances himself from the passionate and frenzied events on-screen—and quietly contemplates his distance from them. It’s a movie that’s rescued in fragments; in those intermittent quiet moments, it’s among his most moving works (there’s a plot twist, too good even to hint at, that arrives like a thunderbolt). But, for much of its running time, it’s a movie to admire while wishing that the wild man would come out from behind the curtain and sing his blues.

Photograph: Sony Classics

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Movie Review: Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine Is Perhaps His Cruelest-Ever Film

As my friend and colleague Peter Biskind says, Blue Jasmine is the first Woody Allen film in a while that doesn’t feel like a promising draft that might have benefited from another run through the typewriter. Rather, I think the writer-director accomplished exactly what he set out to accomplish this time. It’s just, I’m not sure how much I liked the result. It’s not you, Woody, it’s me .

Blue Jasmine might be Allen’s cruelest film ever, which is saying something, since this is a director who’s never been particularly generous toward his characters. In significant ways, though, it’s also one of Allen’s most human movies. Mild spoiler alert: this is a film that draws deep from the well of A Streetcar Named Desire . Cate Blanchett, who has played Blanche du Bois onstage, is here cast as an updated version of Tennessee Williams’s anti-heroine, Blanche’s reveries about a faded Southern aristocracy replaced with contemporary delusions bred by life as lived among the 1 percent in Manhattan and the Hamptons. The film begins with Jasmine (n é e Jeanette) arriving in San Francisco, broke but still flying first class, the dazed victim of a financial scandal involving her former husband. Now homeless, she is forced to rely on the comfort of her estranged sister, Ginger, who is romantically involved with a blue-collar lug named Chili. (Although we see Chili in a wife-beater, he refrains from shouting, Hey, Ginnnnn-gerrrrrr!!!! )

Like Streetcar , Blue Jasmine is the story of Jasmine’s further humbling, of upper-class pretension dashing against the rock of working-class earthiness; also like Streetcar, Allen’s work shares its heroine’s snobbery, the director as appalled as Jasmine by Chili’s and Ginger’s gaucheries, their lack of interest in high culture, their aspirational void. A scene where Chili and Ginger try to set up Jasmine, still clinging to her Chanel bag, with a schlubby, grease-monkey pal of Chili’s is cringe-inducing, though more because of the writer-director’s condescension toward his working-class characters than for their cluelessness as matchmakers. That said, Allen does grant Chili and Ginger good hearts, and as a director he has elevated his occasionally tone-deaf script by casting Bobby Cannavale and Sally Hawkins, both excellent here.

I was glad to see Allen trying to break out of his usual movie universe, that hermetic Upper East Side fantasyland (extending to Europe) where money is almost never an issue and even teenagers go to the opera and dig Sidney Bechet. Blue Jasmine is engaged with contemporary culture and social politics to a degree that Allen’s films have rarely if ever been since maybe Manhattan . (Though I think in 2013 even a cosseted Park Avenue wife would know how to use a computer.) And has he ever really tackled class before, aside from Match Point , which might just as easily have been set in Balzac’s Paris? The new film means to be a post-crash fable, and the fact that we leave Jasmine as blind and delusional as we found her is, perhaps, a nice satirical point (one Elizabeth Warren might appreciate). As human drama, though, it’s all a bit cruel. Jasmine, you see, is not just blind and delusional—she is also alcoholic and mentally ill, and looked at one way the film is a serial humiliation of a woman who, no matter how awful and pretentious and complicit-or-not in her husband’s crimes she may be, we come to have affection for. This is thanks in large part to Blanchett, who allows us to glimpse the fear, panic, and vulnerability beneath Jasmine’s surface, even at its most lacquered. The performance is like watching a gorgeous vase will itself to keep from shattering as it falls floorward.

Allen has been cruel to many other of his characters, most memorably in Crimes and Misdemeanors , and he’s also left many other characters as prisoners of their own stasis and delusions— The Purple Rose of Cairo and Vicky Cristina Barcelona come to mind. But I’m not sure any of those other characters were quite as fully realized as Jasmine, which is naturally tribute to Allen and Blanchett and their alchemy together, but it also made the film, for me, hard to take. (A minority opinion given the reviews I’ve read.) I saw sadism in it, beyond the usual misanthropy. (Love misanthropy!) Or, put another way, Blue Jasmine feels like tragedy without catharsis—an interesting thing to pull off, but not particularly moving or maybe even admirable.

Bruce Handy

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Blue Jasmine

Review by brian eggert august 25, 2013.

Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine goes in places the 77-year-old writer and director hasn’t been since his early days as a budding filmmaker and explores dramatic territory he hasn’t visited in years. Geographically speaking, Allen’s films have been centered on New York’s upper to upper-middle class, and only in the last decade or more has he branched out from the Big Apple to London ( Match Point , Scoop , Cassandra’s Dream ), Spain ( Vicky Cristina Barcelona ), France ( Midnight in Paris ), and most recently a voyage to Italy ( To Rome with Love ). Allen’s forty-third motion picture takes place primarily in San Francisco, the city in which he made his directing debut on Take the Money and Run (1968), and then later starred in the 1972 adaptation of Play It Again, Sam . More importantly, the city represents a kind of bohemian haven for his eponymous character and provides traces of a class commentary, a notion far removed from Allen’s usual comfort zone of privileged New York intellectuals.

Allen’s last few films have been frolicsome journeys, travelogues into European cities, and voyages in time and through memory wherein their scenery and commercial appeal have captured audiences who might not otherwise find themselves watching “a Woody Allen film.” Blue Jasmine is nothing so playful or accessible for general audiences, and it returns Allen to the kind of witty but heartrending character study he explored in Hanna and Her Sisters (1986) or Sweet and Lowdown (1999). His centerpiece is a familiar Allen character, Jasmine Francis, extraordinarily rendered by Cate Blanchett. This fortysomething blonde beauty once ruled the New York social elite by the side of her billionaire financier husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin), a Bernie Madoff-like swindler whose empire has crumbled and left Jasmine insolvent. She’s forced to leave her former life and, when the film opens, not unlike Ruth Madoff, she’s on her way to San Francisco to stay with her less privileged, grocery-bagging sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins).

Each sister adopted from separate sets of biological parents, Jasmine, originally named “Jeanette,” and Ginger have little in common—except that they both agree Jasmine received the better set of genes. Regardless, Jasmine arrives in Ginger’s “homey” Mission District apartment, cramped by her two noisy sons and the seemingly omnipresent boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale), a good-intentioned mechanic with greasy hair and macho attitude. Chili is standard fare for Ginger, who, along with her former husband, the manual laborer Augie (Andrew Dice Clay), invested $200 thousand in lottery winnings with Hal and lost every dime, along with any chance of breaking out of her doldrums. Jasmine insists she had no idea what Hal was doing, but Allen flashes back to her heyday in New York and evidence suggests she’s in a perpetual state of denial, not only about Hal’s illegal activities but also his frequent infidelities. As Allen cuts between the past and present, Vicky Cristina Barcelona cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe captures the bright splendor of Jasmine’s beachside home in the Hamptons, her New York social scene, and her new San Francisco lifestyle, complete with walks through Chinatown and along Ocean Beach.

The fragile Jasmine has become an expert at (re)inventing herself in ways that are convenient to her delicate state, and though her choices may seem like manipulation, one questions if she’s even aware of what she’s doing. For Hal, she adopted the name “Jasmine” over her birth name and, like a chameleon, seems to have put on airs to marry him, rearranging herself for entry into his glamorous Park Avenue world. Now living with Ginger, she does what she must to get on her feet, though she’s far from recovered. She takes a lowly job as the secretary for a rakish dentist (Michael Stuhlbarg) and meanwhile studies computers, if only so she can learn how to use the internet for an eventual online course on interior decorating. But no matter what identity Jasmine tries to adopt, always present is her lingering neurosis and need to have a drink in hand. Jasmine has disguised her fixations well, but Hal’s suicide after his imprisonment had left her broken, her neurotic tendencies free to spill out. Now, after her nervous breakdown, she trails off in conversation and talks to herself as if lost in memory; she later explains to Ginger’s children how, after Hal’s death, she was found talking to herself in the street and given “Edison’s Cure.”

Of Blanchett, it must be said that she has rarely been better, which of this actress is saying much. Her performance recalls her turn in Notes on a Scandal , where she plays a seemingly composed schoolteacher who loses herself in an affair with a student; both performances turn this often royal presence into something base and vulnerable. On the outside, Jasmine’s cosmopolitan lifestyle and elegance seem to come naturally, but Blanchett shows us how her life before and after the myopic Hal is the real Jasmine—stripped down, pill-popping, emotionally bare, and in desperate need of someone to whom she can cling. Watching Blanchett alternate between Jasmine’s sophisticated regality and—after the rug is pulled out from under her—her trembling, nervous, frantic emotional state is simply mesmerizing, a vivid and unpredictable portrayal. Allen has explored such characters before in Alice and Another Woman , but never with such a raw performance behind them.

And while Blanchett’s performance of delusions is the centerpiece, Allen’s ensemble, as usual, should not be overlooked. Hawkins almost explores a familiar Mike Leigh role (namely her appearance in Happy-Go-Lucky ) as Ginger, a confused if optimistic sort whose string of loser boyfriends receive endless derision from her adopted sister. Cavanale and Clay are both ideal as these lower-class lugs, none-too-intelligent but well-meaning and loyal at least. Louis C.K., who seems destined for a protagonist role in a future Allen project, appears as Ginger’s fling and leaves us wanting more. Of course, the ever-charming Baldwin, in his third Allen film, embodies Hal’s suave yet devilish front. From Tetro and Stoker , Alden Ehrenreich is excellent as Hal’s son from his first marriage. And Peter Sarsgaard appears as a refined, bachelor politician who arrives in San Francisco as salvation for Jasmine, and in turn, reveals the very worst in our anti-heroine.

But what kind of salvation could there be for a character such as Jasmine? Allen recognizes that no such deliverance exists; the trauma of what’s happened to her and of what she’s done to herself has ruined her perhaps for all time. Blue Jasmine considers this in full and ends on a note so perfectly downbeat to distinguish itself from Allen’s recent cinematic larks. Exploring classes in a way rarely seen in his films, Allen has made an unforgettable character study of a fascinating, despicable, sympathetic, and engaging figure and those around her. He’s also helped create perhaps the single most impressive female performance in recent memory, with Cate Blanchett using every bit of her considerable skill to breathe life into her moving character. Allen has always excelled at dialogue and writing female characters in particular, but Blanchett’s Jasmine is one of his finest creations. Funny and tragic, Blue Jasmine resonates with bittersweet comedy and deeply felt drama, and it will go down as a true Woody Allen masterwork.

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'Blue' Rhapsodies: Woody Allen, In Need Of New Tricks

David Edelstein

Ginger's (Sally Hawkins) best moments happen while in the company of a persistent suitor named Al (Louis C.K.). Merrick Morton/Sony Classics hide caption

Ginger's (Sally Hawkins) best moments happen while in the company of a persistent suitor named Al (Louis C.K.).

Blue Jasmine

• Director: Woody Allen
• Genre: Comedy
• Running Time: 98 minutes

Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, language and sexual content

With: Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins

Another year, another Woody Allen picture, and few agree on whether that's a good thing. For some, he hasn't made an interesting film since Husbands and Wives, maybe even Hannah and Her Sisters . Others think more recent morality plays like Match Point and comic parables like Midnight in Paris prove the old dog still hunts.

I'm in the middle. I'm amazed he makes films like Blue Jasmine seem fresh and lively when he works in such a closed creative ecosystem — in which no music seems to have penetrated his consciousness in any meaningful way since the jazz of the '50s, no theater since early Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and no movies since Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers in 1972.

More damaging to his work is his congealed worldview. Long ago Allen concluded the universe was godless, justice-less, and meaningless. The best we can do is eke out our hopeless lives with, as he titled one of his movie, whatever works.

In her prime, Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) could be found curled up with a book on the deck with Hal (Alec Baldwin). That all came crashing down with news of Hal's infidelity and their subsequent divorce. Sony Classics hide caption

In her prime, Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) could be found curled up with a book on the deck with Hal (Alec Baldwin). That all came crashing down with news of Hal's infidelity and their subsequent divorce.

Here's what still works for Allen: filmmaking. He continues to refine his technique. His movies are lighter, leaner, more fluid. Blue Jasmine is sour and derivative, but he sells it beautifully.

He does read newspapers, and in interviews expresses strong opinions about the unscrupulousness of Wall Street titans. In Blue Jasmine, he makes his protagonist a kind of younger Ruth Madoff, wife of swindler Bernie, and sets her down in an updated A Streetcar Named Desire .

Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine, once wealthy and ensconced in New York society, now broke — and forced to travel to San Francisco and live with her working-class sister, Ginger, played by Sally Hawkins. They were adopted, and there's quite a gap in their styles. When Jasmine isn't insulting Ginger's blue-collar boyfriend, played by Bobby Cannavale, she's swallowing tranquilizers and going in and out of fugue states, babbling to anyone and no one while Allen whisks us back in time to life with her ex-husband, played by Alec Baldwin.

I don't think Allen identifies with Jasmine the way Tennessee Williams did with Blanche. He clearly hates her. She didn't know her husband was defrauding investors, but only because she didn't want to — not with shopping and Pilates and all those charity events. Calamity hasn't made her a better person.

Read More On 'Blue Jasmine'

Cate Blanchett, Trifling With The Kindness Of Strangers

That Blanchett played Blanche DuBois onstage is a mixed blessing. I found her too theatrical, too external: I wanted a grittier actress. But Blanchett does carry scenes that would trip up a less able performer, and she's a terrific physical comedian. In flashbacks, when Jasmine is living high, her posture — the uptilt of her head, the precision with which she holds her designer purse — is amusingly studied, as if she'd trained to be an Upper East Side trophy wife.

If you know Allen's work or A Streetcar Named Desire, you can predict almost every turn and twist of Blue Jasmine . But Baldwin, plus Michael Stuhlbarg as a schnooky dentist and Andrew Dice Clay as Ginger's ex-husband, add deep and surprising shadings to their stereotypes. And you can never predict Sally Hawkins, best known as Poppy in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky . She's Blanchett's opposite — raw, goosey, spontaneous. Her best scenes are with a persistent suitor played by Louis C.K., a sensitive actor even with lines he didn't write. But I wish he'd re -written them: They end at the point where in his own TV show, Louie, they'd mushroom into something more poetic and cringeworthy and revelatory.

In interviews, Louis C.K. has said he'd like to co-write a film with Allen; I say, "Go for it!" I don't think Allen is too old to relearn what in his best work he showed artists like Louis C.K.: that even ordinary people have the capacity to transcend their worst instincts and awful surroundings. And that you don't have to settle for whatever works.

The Odd Apple

A review of “blue jasmine”: story and analysis.

This post includes a brief plot summary, an analysis and an explanation about the ending of the film Blue Jasmine (2013). Beware of spoilers.

Recommended

Blue Jasmine (Blu-ray)

Can a person ever truly escape their past? The 2013 comedy drama explores the consequences of actions and the power of second chances. Directed by Woody Allen, “Blue Jasmine” has a stellar cast. The film stars Cate Blanchett as Jasmine Francis, Alec Baldwin as Hal Francis, and Sally Hawkins as Ginger.

“Blue Jasmine” uses a non-linear narrative to tell the story of a woman who tries to start over after her life falls apart.

Before her downfall, Jasmine Francis was part of New York’s elite. Jasmine’s husband, Hal, was able to provide her with a luxurious lifestyle because he made a fortune defrauding other people. The FBI eventually arrests Hal for his crimes and confiscates his assets, leaving Jasmine penniless.

Now that she is homeless, Jasmine has no other option but to live with her sister, Ginger, in San Francisco. By the way, she was also one of Hal’s former victims. When Ginger and her former husband, Augie, won the lottery, they gave it all to Hal to invest. When the conman lost all of their money, their marriage also went downhill.

However, Jasmine has a couple of secrets of her own. Here comes the big plot twist: Jasmine is the one who put Hal in prison! She did it as retaliation for his affairs and for trying to divorce her. Out of rage, Jasmine called the FBI, which led to his arrest and subsequent suicide. Also, her son, Danny, knows what she did, hence their estranged relationship.

In the present time, everybody seems to have to move on. Ginger has a new man, Chilli, whom her sister disapproves of. Jasmine herself already has her eyes set on her next “target”: Dwight. He is rich, a widow, a diplomat, and an aspiring congressman—totally Jasmine’s type.

During the courtship period, Jasmine plays her part very well and omits certain facts about her past. While Jasmine is scoring points in her love life, Ginger is also trying to “upgrade”. She “ditches” Chilli and goes for a man named Al, who turned out to be a letdown as he is married.

Things between Dwight and Jasmine get serious, and when he asks her to marry him, Jasmine gladly accepts. However, karma strikes when the couple goes shopping for the engagement ring. Jasmine runs into Augie, who tells Dwight about her shady past. Now that the truth is out, Dwight calls off the engagement.

The ending of “Blue Jasmine” shows Ginger and Jasmine getting into a heated fight. Before leaving, Jasmine lies to Ginger and tells her that she is going to marry Dwight and move in with him. A disoriented Jasmine wanders the streets, and after a while, she finally sits on a park bench, talking to herself.

“Blue Jasmine” is a great study and portrayal of mental illness done with a dash of humour.

Mental illness is, most of the time, gradual and insidious. As a matter of fact, we never see Jasmine as a mentally ill person until we see her talking to herself on a bench. Actually, there were some signs in the beginning.

When Jasmine was flying first class in the opening scene, she was in reality talking to herself. The lady sitting next to her was a complete stranger. In retrospect, she wasn’t that engaged in what Jasmine had to say, but she was rather trying to act polite.

Jasmine’s “delusional behaviour” reflects her inability to cope with what happened. Somehow she still lives in the past, a time where she was rich and “happy”. Just when she had a “break”, her life took another 360-degree turn, and she was back at square one.

After breaking up with Dwight, Jasmine suffers another mental breakdown, which leads her to have incoherent thoughts and wander aimlessly around the streets of San Francisco. Even the lady sitting at the bench slowly walks away, she’s afraid of Jasmine.

Ironically, Jasmine Francis is the one who caused her own downfall.

Had Jasmine let Hal quietly divorce her, maybe she would’ve been able to keep her comfortable lifestyle. Moreover, Jasmine would still have a relationship with Danny, who deeply resents his mother for sending his father to prison.

After Hal’s arrest, she lost her husband, her son, and her wealth. Although Jasmine almost had a shot at rebuilding a new life with Dwight, she had to learn her lesson first. Actions have consequences, and running into Augie was just a reminder of that.

Jasmine wasn’t actively defrauding people. However, she knew how Hal was making his money and kept her mouth shut because it benefited her. So, in a way, one could say that Jasmine was Hal’s accomplice, which makes her guilty of his crimes too.

The protagonist of “Blue Jasmine” is flawed and very unlikeable.

Underneath the stylish clothes and snobbish front lies a person who is unwell. Jasmine Francis is someone who drinks way too much to function properly. Also, she has a dangerous pill addiction. Despite her unfortunate circumstances, it’s really hard to feel an ounce of sympathy for her because of her bratty personality.

Jasmine despises Ginger’s acquaintances, whom she deems “low-life”, yet she has very few talents herself. A prime example of this would be her aspirations to become an interior designer. This woman has no computer skills to start with, how is she going to finish an online interior design course?

The relationships between the characters are complex, unraveling a web of secrets, deceit, and betrayal.

By the way, Jasmine’s “little romance” with Dwight was nothing but a business transaction for her. She never loved Dwight. This woman loved the idea of being a future congressman’s wife, which could’ve been her golden ticket to return to New York’s top 1%. Having said that, Jasmine wasn’t in love with Dwight, but with his lifestyle.

Perhaps Hal was the only man that Jasmine ever loved, which is kind of sad. Love indeed makes people do crazy things. Unwilling to let Hal go, Jasmine turned him to the police. After her fall from grace, Ginger was the only one who came to her rescue, yet Jasmine insists on treating her sister poorly.

Deep inside, Jasmine hates other people’s happiness. Before parting ways with Ginger, Jasmine lied to her sister about marrying Dwight to save face. Jasmine is a prideful person, she can’t stand the sight of others seeing her struggle. By the way, Jasmine never really cared about Ginger, if she did, she wouldn’t have let Augie give his money to Hal.

“Blue Jasmine” concludes with an ambiguous ending. Jasmine’s mental health deteriorates after missing a chance to regain her social status.

Towards the end, it’s evident that Jasmine is going through a mental breakdown again. However, this time, she might not come back. First, Dwight left her, then her son Danny rejected her. It’s almost certain that Jasmine might never be a mentally sane person again.

It’s interesting to note how people judge each other based on appearance, social status, and surroundings.

As mentioned before, Jasmine has been mentally ill for a while. Nonetheless, the way she presents herself influences how others treat her. The first lady on the plane was willing to listen to her rambling because Jasmine had a put-together image of herself. However, the last lady on the bench “ran away” from Jasmine because she looked messy and disheveled.

Final Thoughts

In my opinion, “Blue Jasmine” is one of Woody Allen’s finest works. It has amazing storytelling and a great ensemble of actors. Nothing feels overdone, and the main focus lies on the characters’ background stories.

By the way, Jasmine Francis is one hell of a character: she’s a horrible person, but she’s intriguing. It’s almost like watching a train wreck: you don’t want to stare at it, yet you can’t look away. This is all thanks to Cate Blanchett and her spectacular performance as Jasmine Francis. The film wouldn’t have been as memorable without her.

Overall, “Blue Jasmine” is one of the films that reminds people to be mindful of their decisions. Whether one likes to admit it or not, actions have consequences. In addition, no one can ever really escape from the past, and karma always comes around.

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Blue jasmine, common sense media reviewers.

Smart, timely Woody Allen dramedy has drinking, pills.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The film is somewhat bleak, but if there's one mes

Ginger is a pragmatist and a survivor. And althoug

Loud fights between couples, one of which culminat

Some kissing and groping, plus allusions to sex, b

Language includes a couple of uses of "f--k," plus

Brands/products associated with affluence are used

A woman pops prescription pills and chases them wi

Parents need to know that Blue Jasmine is a Woody Allen-directed dramedy with themes that may be too mature for tweens and younger. The protagonist is mentally unstable and is falling apart right before viewers' eyes. Characters don't readily empathize with one another, and they sometimes sabotage each other, not to…

Positive Messages

The film is somewhat bleak, but if there's one message, it's this: What goes around comes around.

Positive Role Models

Ginger is a pragmatist and a survivor. And although her sister hasn't always been nice to her, she still opens her arms to her. But Jasmine defines herself by her position on the social (and financial ladder), and doesn't seem to understand that the world doesn't live nearly as well as she does. Characters don't readily empathize with one another, and they sometimes sabotage each other, not to mention themselves.

Violence & Scariness

Loud fights between couples, one of which culminates in a woman getting out of a car abruptly (almost while it's still moving). A man screams at a woman's face in anger, roughly grabbing her. One character is very angry, bordering on abusive.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Some kissing and groping, plus allusions to sex, but viewers don't actually see much.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes a couple of uses of "f--k," plus "s--t," "p---y," "a--hole," "hell," "crap," "damn," "goddamn," "Jesus" (as an exclamation), and more.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Brands/products associated with affluence are used to denote someone's "high class" stature: Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Hermes, Polo, and the like.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A woman pops prescription pills and chases them with vodka or any other liquor every chance she can get. (She's clearly developing a drinking and pill-popping problem.) Social drinking at parties.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Blue Jasmine is a Woody Allen -directed dramedy with themes that may be too mature for tweens and younger. The protagonist is mentally unstable and is falling apart right before viewers' eyes. Characters don't readily empathize with one another, and they sometimes sabotage each other, not to mention themselves. There's lots of drinking and pill-popping -- the main character, Jasmine (aka Jeanette), relies on hard liquor and prescription medication to get through the day. Another character is very angry, bordering on abusive, and there's some strong language ("f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," etc.). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (2)

Based on 3 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Jasmine French ( Cate Blanchett ) once owned Manhattan, in a manner of speaking. Her husband, Hal ( Alec Baldwin ), was a successful financier; they were a constant fixture in top social circles. But Jasmine's carefully coiffed and pampered world falls to pieces when Hal is arrested for fraudulent business dealings (a la Bernie Madoff) and their belongings and mansions are seized. Hal ends up in jail, where fate isn't kind to him. So off to San Francisco Jasmine goes to find a new start near her sister, Ginger ( Sally Hawkins ). Ginger's divorced, with an ex-husband ( Andrew Dice Clay ) who can't stand Jasmine and a new boyfriend, Chili ( Bobby Cannavale ), whom she dislikes. And then there's the newer guy ( Louis C.K. )... Jasmine wants a fresh start, but San Francisco is a far cry from Manhattan, and she isn't made for a humdrum life working the front desk for a pervy dentist. When a dashing gentleman ( Peter Sarsgaard ) swoops into her life, Jasmine commits to getting him to the altar.

Is It Any Good?

Woody Allen ‘s been steadily regaining momentum since 2005's Match Point ; now, it feels like we have him back for good, armed with incisive observations served on a bed of wit and insight. He knows there's plenty to mine in that particular moment of our recent history where it seemed the poor got poorer and the rich got richer until they were caught. In Blanchett, he has an excellent partner. Her chic, pampered Jasmine brings Tennessee Williams' Blanche DuBois to Bernie Madoff's era, ripping at her once beautifully tailored seams. It's a discomfiting sight watching an elegant woman crack up, especially juxtaposed against Hawkins' earthy, practical Ginger, who may always be choosing losers but has both eyes open while doing so. In Allen's movies, people almost always get their comeuppance. Blanchett's triumph is how she still makes us feel sorry for Jasmine even if we don't like her very much.

A minor complaint: Scenes filmed in New York have that specificity that Allen movies always do; but when Blue Jasmine switches to San Francisco, a certain fuzziness sets in despite the appearance of the Golden Gate Bridge and other City by the Bay bonafides. It might as well have been set in Seattle or Chicago. Still, we're glad to see the director in fine form, wherever he chooses to go. For movies like this, we'll follow him anywhere.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about whether the story Woody Allen is telling in Blue Jasmine is relevant to these times. Why or why not?

How does the movie depict drinking and prescription drug use? Are they glamorized at all? Are there realistic consequences?

Jasmine and Ginger are sisters. Do they seem like they like each other? Respect each other? Is their relationship a good one?

Talk to your kids about Jasmine's plight. Is she a victim or complicit? Are we intended to sympathize with her?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 28, 2013
• On DVD or streaming : January 21, 2014
• Cast : Alec Baldwin , Cate Blanchett , Louis C.K. , Sally Hawkins
• Director : Woody Allen
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
• Genre : Comedy
• Topics : Brothers and Sisters
• Run time : 98 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : mature thematic material, language and sexual content
• Last updated : March 5, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Movie Review: Blue Jasmine

By Jack Silbert on August 6, 2013

4 stars out of 5

I will admit to not knowing the difference between Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet. Thankfully, Woody cast Peter Sarsgaard and not Alexander Skarsgard, who I confuse with Stellan Skarsgard. This could’ve easily turned into a Shakespearean comedy.

Instead, it’s barely a Woody Allen comedy. Closer to a tragedy, really. And Blanchett—the slightly older, more “austere” of the (K)ate-et(t)s—is perfectly cast as Jasmine, who is a bit blue. I’d say she is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but we learn that she’s already had one.

Jasmine—who was Jeanette, but that didn’t sound classy enough—has fallen from grace, and hard. Her marriage to financial wheeler-dealer Hal (Alec Baldwin, who can play slick, cold, and charming in his sleep) has collapsed in infidelity and monetary misdeeds. She leaves Park Avenue for her sister’s place in San Francisco, after a pit stop in (shudder!) Brooklyn. But can she reclaim her life? Or did she ever really have one?

In the hands of a less talented actress and/or writer/director, this fish-out-of-water tale could’ve been played for cheap laughs. (Actually, I wouldn’t be too upset if Woody turned around and made a comedy version of this, like he kind of did with Match Point and Scoop .) But Woody is going for something much more subtle here, and with Blanchett’s help, he really pulls it off. It’s a character study, more than anything; a psychological profile. Blanchett dares to make Jasmine pretty unlikable while betting that we won’t totally give up on her. And we don’t.

Sally Hawkins is also quite wonderful as Jasmine’s sister Ginger. (Both adopted, she points out, so Jasmine has better genes.) She’s happy in her cluttered middle-class life, but the presence of Jasmine makes her wonder if she should be striving for something more. Hawkins makes her totally warm and charming and we feel for her.

Andrew Dice Clay—yes, that Andrew Dice Clay—does fine work as Ginger’s ex-husband. He might really be able to pick up a few Gandolfini roles. Bobby Canavale and Louis C.K. also give solid performances, what you’d expect from them, even if they don’t really pop off the screen. For anyone who’s been watching The Killing this season, Sarsgard—as an image-conscious striver—really shows his versatility here. And his hair. He also gets the only Woody-esque delivery, on one line after his character learns the truth about Jasmine.

As heavy as this movie can seem, there are laughs throughout—just a little more low-key than usual. I think Woody wisely didn’t want to overwhelm the story. Instead, he steps back and lets Blanchett take control.

Posted in movie reviews | Tagged 10s movies , Cate Blanchett , Woody Allen

2 responses to “Movie Review: Blue Jasmine”

Wonderfully-written review of a fine, interesting and textured movie. Cate Blanchett wowed me and I love Sally Hawkins, but as you note, was most surprised by Andrew Dice Clay. Thank you for putting this in perspective for me~!

curiosity killed the cat they say. so I googled “blue jasmine’ curious to see what kind of plant it was. (we have a large pesky plain? Jasmine plant that has been going back and forth between life and death the last 3 years). After 15 pages of google search, solidly locked into links pertaining to the movie, I chose to follow its bottom of the page suggestion, ‘blue jasmine flower’. Aha, discovery. It’s wonderful to see the cyberworld’s priorities.

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