by allan tong for FILMbutton

After Paris and Rome, Woody Allen returns to America in his latest film, a well-crafted and ultimately unsettling portrait of a woman who had everything in the world, but loses it. Sure, laughs and sharp one-liners abound in Allen’s script which carries the typical Woody blend of love triangles and mismatched relationships. However, the film’s focus lands squarely on Jasmine whom Kate Blanchett plays in a tour-de-force of acting.

Jasmine is a well-to-do New Yorker who escapes a failed marriage and moves in with her sister, Ginger, (Sally Hawkins) in San Francisco. They distance between them is not merely geographical. Jasmine used to fly private jets and buy designer clothes that her husband, Hal (Alex Baldwin) provided. Ginger is a working class gal, raising two kids on her own on a grocery clerk’s wages. She lost her savings by investing in one of Hal’s schemes, which puts a further barrier between the sisters.

Meanwhile, Jasmine loathes Ginger’s coarse ex-husband and current boyfriend. She holds her nose working as a dental receptionist as she studies computers at night, looking for some sort of direction in life. Meanwhile, she pops pills and talks to herself in public, barely containing her brittle facade.

Blue Jasmine intercuts the San Francisco and New York stories effectively. In New York, we trace Hal’s infidelities and shady business practices that ultimately drive Jasmine to San Francisco. (Without spoiling the film) the New York storyline touches a nerve in today’s painful and lingering recession.

Sally Hawkins does an admirable job as Ginger, but her role is less challenging than Blanchett whose Jasmine is manic, devious, sweet and self-destructive. After the romanticism of his European films, Woody Allen returns to strong dramatic form in Blue Jasmine.

Allan is a Toronto filmmaker, co-directing Leone Stars, a documentary about child victims of the Sierra Leonean civil war.