Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen’s 45th film as a director, is an unusually spirited blend of his steadfast themes. Was he amused by Ruth Madoff’s declarations of innocence? Mindful of the ephemerality of the life he and others have worked, married or been born into on the Upper East Side of Manhattan? Whatever it is that sent Allen to his trusty pen and paper and then on to set, the man cooks with gas here. He creates an unnerving and unfortunately plausible protagonist in Jasmine, a “lady who lunches” now stripped of her money, power and status and forced to dry land, the land of the proletariat (literally via a first-class flight she can no longer afford but books anyway). Blue Jasmine is the most impressive artifact of Woody Allen’s “Late Period” (outstandingly begun with Match Point and featuring Vicki Christina Barcelona and Midnight in Paris). This of course followed his “Exhausted Period” embodied by the despondent Anything Else? and the leaden Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Jasmine proves perhaps the most seamless amalgam of the 21st century Allen’s obsessions. Some quick bits seem companionable with sillier moments in recent congenial trifles like Scoop and To Rome, With Love. Other scenes play out as orthodox drama in line with Match Point or You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, while Allen’s use of a traditional tragic construction proves this time more involving if no less schematic than in Cassandra’s Dream. I initially reacted to Jasmine herself (played by the redoubtable Cate Blanchett) as a cartoon and with something like bemused revulsion, enjoying watching her pathological self-interest brought to its knees.
