Blue Jasmine (2013

Nostalgia has a habit of clouding our memories with attractive images. The subconscious filters out the bad times or tries to amend them with the thoughts of what if. The famous line from On the Waterfront, ‘I could have been a contender’ comes to mind when we meet Cate Blanchet’s character………… She is frequently recalling what it is she has lost and instead of ‘could have been……’ she had been a contender. Until, that is, she discovered that her imprisoned banker husband was a fraudulent crook.

The reason for stating this is that in twenty five years time when young people look back at the ‘teens it will be a challenge for them to recall the difference between the good and the bad times when the only possible chance for many to own their own home will be to inherit their parents house. How many will reflect with goodwill to the lack of financial opportunity that most folk in the UK and US have had to experience? Blue Jasmine is a story of our times. The zeitgeist is one of hope and a struggle for survival.

Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine. She has lost everything when we meet her talking to a woman on a plane. We then realise she is talking at her because when the woman’s husband greets her at the luggage carousel and asks her who the woman talking to her was, she says ‘I don’t know but she wouldn’t stop talking to me.’ This was a clever entrance vehicle to the story and it is one of two moments when the audience that I was in, laughed. The other was when Jasmine’s sisters children, in a diner with Jasmine for a treat ask her why she keeps talking to herself. Both these moments were poignant and clear indicators that people near her were thinking she was odd. The laughter was nervous.

Jasmine has fled to her sisters house in California. She is penniless but her tastes and expectations remain the same. Her sister Ginger, played by Sally Hawkins, is bringing up two young boys by herself after separating from her husband. We discover that in a previous time that she and her husband have lost a considerable windfall of money in one of Jasmine’s husbands fraudulent investments. Ginger is now with a new boyfriend and Jasmine tries to corrupt this new relationship.

The story shows us Jasmine’s downfall in the form of a spiral. At each level downwards we see a facet or an action that she is using to grip onto for safety. But in doing so it becomes a catalyst for another person’s downfall, corruption or temporary destruction. We can see the pointers for this in the lies that she has to spin to survive. She has nothing, why should others be better off than she or have life worth living when she does not.

She is also prey to other male speculators who want her. One is a lusty dentist who advances she fends off. The other, a wealthy diplomat who she wants but cannot allow the truth to come between them. When it does, the rejection becomes a catalyst for her breakdown.

We finally see her on a park bench talking to herself again. She could have been a contender but there are only so many breakdowns and traumas a girl can take.

This is not a hurtful story. We are pleased that her sister Ginger gets it together again. The director, Woody Allen, does not wish Jasmine harm and he has created a web of sympathy that only those who have been the victims of austerity might share.