Blue Jasmine is the latest film from Woody Allen who, at various stages of his career, has been declared on-form, off-form, sliding-from-form, returning-to-form and, for all I know, as I don’t follow these matters closely, wearing form like a carnival hat with tinkling bells, but there is no need to bother with any of that. All you need know is Blue Jasmine is brilliant. It’s brilliantly written, directed and observed; it’s brilliantly watchable, if not mesmerising; and brilliantly performed, particularly by Cate Blanchett, who will knock your socks off, and may knock them off so explosively there is every chance you will never retrieve them again. (They might be knocked off all the way to kingdom come, for example.) This is possibly a return to form, now I think about it, although whether it’s a return to form from having been off-form or not off-form exactly, just sliding from form, and not yet halfway down, I really couldn’t say. So many ‘forms’. Hard to keep track.
Although Woody — yes, we’re on first-name terms; he’s always admired my work — has denied this is a reboot of Streetcar Named Desire, there is just no getting away from the parallels, or the fragile, self-deluded central character, who is our Blanche DuBois. Here, she is Jasmine (Blanchett) and, when we first meet her, she is travelling on a plane. She has the polished sheen of wealth: a Chanel jacket, a designer handbag held importantly in the crook of her arm; Louis Vuitton luggage. But the way she is babbling, unstoppably, to a fellow passenger instantly informs us she is unhinged, struggling to stay afloat, and we soon learn why.
Her husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin; wonderful), who had been supremely rich, has been exposed as a Bernie Madoff-style conman, and she is fleeing New York for San Francisco and the apartment of her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins; cheerful as ever).
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