Is Cate Blanchett’s Blue Jasmine Performance The Best Ever In A Woody Allen Film?
She sure knows how to play a mean drunk.
There’s really not much more that can be said about Woody Allen as a filmmaker.
His way with words is almost unparalleled (he won his third Academy Award for Original Screenplay for Midnight In Paris two years ago, aged 75) and, perhaps more famously, his work with actors is second to none. There’s a reason why he’s still able to entice unique, star-studded ensembles of world class actors to spend a month or two firing off witticisms at one another, even if he rarely ventures outside of his comfort zone anymore. (Of course, just quietly, while his ability to make one movie a year puts most filmmakers to shame, I think we can all agree that if the world had been spared You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger or Hollywood Ending, we’d be better for it.)
His latest film is Blue Jasmine. While it isn’t as bold and dark as 2005’s Match Point, it makes a compelling argument for Allen’s continuing relevance as an artistic force. After spending the last eight years hopping across Europe with Vicki Cristina Barcelona, To Rome With Love, and the aforementioned Midnight In Paris and Match Point, Blue Jasmine sees the native New Yorker back on home soil (albeit on the West Coast) with a film that blends the fictional world of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire with the factual case of Bernie Madoff. It may just be the best work of his post-Match Point career renaissance.
However, it would be foolish to deny that a large part of Blue Jasmine’s strength lies not in Woody Allen, but in Cate Blanchett. The Australian actress makes her first appearance in an Allen picture and runs with it like nobody has since that other Australian Judy Davis did in Husbands And Wives (1992). Blanchett stars as Jasmine, a former Manhattan socialite — her address mantra of “New York, Park Avenue” and dismissive quips about Brooklyn will get a good laugh from anyone with a knowledge of New York neighbourhoods — whose sudden fall from grace at the hands of her embezzling husband (a thankfully restrained Alec Baldwin) sees her move to the slums of San Francisco with her poor, working-class sister (a divine Sally Hawkins). Of course, to Woody Allen “the slums” and “working-class” still means being able to afford a fabulous apartment as a single parent on minimum wage, like she’s a character on Friends, but why nitpick when the rest is so good?
It really can’t be underestimated how great Blanchett is as she delivers a never-ending roll-call of cruel taunts, vodka-soaked monologues and escalating fluctuations in mental health. Jasmine is a sick woman who has seemingly burnt bridges with so many people that nobody wants to get her the help she needs. The ending is a poignant reminder that those people we dismiss on the street all came from somewhere (it just so happens that in Woody Allen’s universe, they get there dripping in pearls and Chanel).
The performance has been cited as an obvious early contender for an Academy Award, and given my own propensity for actresses playing mean drunks (I’m looking at you Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?), I’d be happy to see it happen. This isn’t a rare character-type within Allen’s oeuvre, though, and follows in the traditions of some of the best work found within his films: Geraldine Page in Interiors (1978), the previously mentioned Judy Davis in Husbands And Wives, and Penelope Cruz in Vicki Cristina Barcelona (2008) are all glowing examples of similar performances in equally glowing films. All were nominated for Oscars (Cruz even won), and the criminally undervalued Interiors even inspired a song by Death Cab For Cutie (that’d be ‘Death Of An Interior Decorator‘ from 2003’s Transatlanticism. There’s a first time for everything, right?).
Woody Allen is a filmmaker who frequently gets labelled a misogynist due to his portrayals of unstable and domineering women. However, much like Lars Von Trier, I see him as one of the few filmmakers actively writing complex, prickly, multi-dimensional female characters on a regular basis, and the positively transfixing Blanchett is one of his best yet. Perhaps most shocking is how this genuinely horrible character who deserves every ounce of comeuppance that she gets somehow earns sympathy from the audience. Thanks to a smart screenplay and that marvel of a performance, I found myself rooting for this abomination of a person in some weird way.
In the pantheon of great acting in Woody Allen movies, Cate Blanchett can stand tall as one of the best. And, hey, I guess this means there’s still something left to say about Woody Allen movies after all.
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Blue Jasmine opens in cinemas nationally today.
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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer and film critic from Melbourne, and currently based in New York City. His work has been seen online (Onya Magazine, Quickflix), in print (The Big Issue, Metro Magazine, Intellect Books Ltd’s World Film Locations: Melbourne), as well as heard on Joy 94.9.