First world problems

After pilgrimages across England and Europe with Match Point, Vicky Christina Barcelona and You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Woody Allen returns Stateside with Blue Jasmine, his first American-set production since 2009’s Whatever Works. While it’s a break from the 78-year-old writer-director’s hermetic Upper East Side ecosystem — except for several flashbacks — Blue Jasmine continues to embrace the funny and the somber and expose the anxieties and desires of the upper-middle-class.

The film follows Jasmine French as she arrives in San Francisco, broke but still flying first class, after her husband winds up in jail as a result of a financial scandal à la Bernie Madoff or Allen Stanford. Forced to relocate from her Park Avenue penthouse to the cramped walk-up of her estranged blue-collar sister, Jasmine struggles to maintain the veneer of privilege and decorum while adjusting to her new circumstances. As the truth unspools about her role in her spouse’s downfall and the collapse of her nuclear family, Jasmine descends deeper into madness.

POST-CRASH FABLE

More often than not, the oddballs in Woody Allen’s universe are worldly, overeducated, neurotic Manhattanites, from the extended family in Everyone Says I Love You to the restless couple in Annie Hall, which the late film critic Roger Ebert called “just about everyone’s favorite Woody Allen movie.” His latest offering, however, demonstrates how skilled he is at making familiar ideas appear fresh and relevant.

Blue Jasmine is, by all accounts, a post-crash fable that stars a one percenter in free fall. Though its overall plot may possess a tenuous connection to the television sitcom 2 Broke Girls — about a pampered Upper East Sider who moves to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, after her father is caught operating a Ponzi scheme — Blue Jasmine is obviously more heartbreaking and poignant. Equal parts Blanche DuBois and Lady Macbeth, Jasmine is a new-money trophy bride who was neither meant to take on a menial job nor bred to live with the other 99. By leaving our anti-heroine’s fate ambiguous, Allen seems to be saying that some individuals are simply too damaged to be fixed. 

A BROKEN MING VASE

Cate Blanchett’s nuanced portrayal of fallen New York socialite Jasmine — every twitch, every condescending stare — dovetails impeccably with Allen’s instincts in the realm of casting. Witnessing her play her ethereal, patrician beauty against her character’s patent flaws, switching effortlessly from strength to vulnerability, is like watching a Ming vase fall then break in excruciating slow motion. The Australian thespian has already won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, and has delivered fascinating turns in everything from Elizabeth and The Talented Mr. Ripley to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and I’m Not There. On the persistent Oscar buzz, she told Deadline.com: “Is there? It’s better than disregard and disinterest.”

It was in high school that I first became acquainted with Woody Allen, when we were tasked to watch and analyze The Purple Rose of Cairo. The film within a film was an excellent introduction to his body of work as the meta-narrative stretches the limits of the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

Since then I’ve regarded him as a spirit animal, especially after repeat viewings of Manhattan Murder Mystery, Mighty Aphrodite and To Rome With Love. His brand of wit and eccentricity and his vision of urban utopia — where money is almost never an issue and even teenagers go to the opera — have influenced me immensely. His artistic and intellectual catalogue finds its latest addition in Blue Jasmine; more accolades will be welcome but somehow superfluous.

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