With echoes of Tennessee Williams’ classic American play, Cate Blanchett stars as the fading figure of class and virtue in Woody Allen’s latest Blue Jasmine

If you’ve seen A Streetcar Named Desire, you know the plot to Woody Allen’s latest, Blue Jasmine. And if Blue Jasmine continues to follow the 1951 film this closely, the Academy Awards could spell Best Actress for Cate Blanchett as Jasmine French/Blanche DuBois and Best Supporting Actress for Sally Hawkins as her sister Ginger/Stella.

Blanchett knows the Blanche DuBois part well, having played it in a 2009 production in NYC. As for Allen, it wouldn’t be the first time he played with Streetcar – in Sleeper (1973) his character is in a trance and takes himself for Blanche DuBois while Diane Keaton plays along as Stanley Kowalski. In Blue Jasmine, the plot follows Streetcar quite closely: from Jasmine’s fall from grace to her moving in with her sister Ginger and Ginger’s socially-inferior partner Chili (Bobby Cannnavale) – with loud protests of “No one wants to get out of here as fast as I do” that let us know she’s here to stay. Jasmine is still reaching for the bottle to calm her nerves – of course it’s the 21th century now so there’s Xanax and a financial crisis too. But Jasmine’s manipulation of her sister and men to escape her surroundings and the tension between Jasmine and Chili are the constants that drive the film forward.

Allen is adamant Blue Jasmine is based on a woman his wife knew who knew a woman who lost everything, including her plane. If you were reading the news in 2008 and the names Bernie and Ruth Madoff and a Ponzi scheme ring a bell you probably have a pretty good picture of fallen socialite Jasmine French (“the government took everything”) and her supporting cast. The details match down to Mrs Madoff’s public fallout with her son, as well as her moving in with her sister and brother-in-law – who were among Mr Madoff’s victims – after the scandal.

So why see a film if you already know what it’s all about? Because Allen’s writing and excellent casting gives us answers to some of our questions about the human beings behind Chanel suits, private jets and scandals, not only the Madoffs but those of that social class so alien to the average viewer – the sort who quip: “I don’t know how anyone can breathe with low ceilings”.

As Jasmine’s husband Hal puts it when she queries a dubious transaction: “Is there anything you want that you don’t have?” What does it take for a wife to look the other way even as her husband is robbing her only sister? Answer: a private jet. Or could it be fear of becoming what the New York Times called ‘The Loneliest Woman in New York’? If Jasmine is to be believed, you can’t fall any lower than working in a shoe shop and tying the laces of the women you used to socialise with. The thing is, it’s her sister Ginger, a check-out clerk, she’s complaining to and we are short on a back-story that might explain why Ginger puts up with her sister’s snobbery, condescension, lying and manipulative behaviour – not to mention her silent collusion in her husband’s stealing, which cost Ginger her “only chance for a better life”.

As an Allen fan I met in the queue for the toilet warned me, Blue Jasmine is ‘a bit dark’ but the contrast between Jasmine and her straight-talking “grease monkey” future brother-in-law Chili (Danny Cannavale) is there to bring some laughs: “One minute you’re on top of the world, the next [blows a raspberry].” The poor reception of films like Match Point suggests it was high time for Allen to look at how the other half lives. He gets points for trying, but ultimately, Allen has created a walking cliché of the working class.

Aesthetics matter to Woody Allen, and Blanchett concedes that with Manhattan-Allen it’s all about “heightened reality”. But Blanchett’s harrowing portrayal of a woman cracking up is so theatrical that the rest of Allen’s theatrics fade into the background: “Anxiety, nightmares and a nervous breakdown, there’s only so many traumas a person can withstand until they take to the streets and start screaming.”

With 47 films to his name, Woody is showing no signs of slowing down. Next year’s film is already in post-production. As a long-term Allen fan, Blue Jasmine has reminded me why I’m still going to see his films even though the last one I found memorable was made in another millennium.

About Clémence Sebag

Clémence Sebag is roamer, she started out as a West Londoner, worked her way up North, then ventured down South until all that was left was East. She tried Rio and Buenos Aires but couldn't get used to the weather. By day she works as a literary translator, by night she writes book reports for a literary scout. She wants to be a writer when she grows up and everybody knows Paris is where writers live. Fall-back career: literary groupie. She Blames Bridget Jones for not having gotten around to penning the 10th draft of her 31st novel. Meanwhile, you can find some flash fiction from her Goldsmiths Creative Writing MA here. She also dabbles in poetry and you can find her in the anthology The Dance Is New. Best place to find her: Café de Flore. If Paris is too far, Tweet her @clefranglaise or follow her blog.

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