Woody Allen was back at the box office this year with Blue Jasmine. Starring the Hollywood heavyweight Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine is Allen's telling of a Bernie Madoff like story at the expense of the Park Avenue hedge fund wife. Allen has an incredible ability to skewer subjects with such accurate depictions that straddles the edge of caricature - but remain based in real life examples. If you live in New York, watching this film you will no doubt find yourself thinking "oh, that's just like..." - many times.
Jasmine is the ultra privileged wife of a New York Hedge Fund financier, philanderer, and ultimately a ponzi scheme crook played brilliantly by Alec Baldwin. The movie is told in a flashback format that follows Jasmine as she goes to live with her poorer, blue collar sister in San Francisco. Jasmine has gone from her Park Avenue life of Pilates, fundraisers, and private planes to sleeping in the spare room of her sisters walk up apartment in last year's CHANEL jacket. Her life of luxury just a memory.
Actually, the Chanel jacket is a fantastic prop that travels throughout the film. It was a genius choice by the costume designer, as it proves the investment in those magical tweeds by Chanel. One luxurious jacket and your fashionable for the next 20 years! It was a brilliant choice to make that a white Chanel jacket.. showing us just how luxurious Jasmine's life was. Buying a $5,000.00 jacket in white - that is luxury. (If you only buy one Chanel jacket - choose black). Cate Blanchett is transformative in her role as a woman who had everything that money can buy, but at the same time.. nothing.
Woody Allen is a master at pinpointing the human condition. His movies cover the range of emotions from fear to joy, ecstasy to sorrow, and usually a big dose of inadequacy from an insecure character that is the unseen Woody of the film. There is no filmmaker that puts New York on film more intimately than Allen. With two gorgeous cities like San Francisco and New York in one film - what's not to love.
If there has ever been proof that we get better with age, Woody Allen proves that point with Blue Jasmine. Click images and links to see more and find the film. STREAM IT TONIGHT - CLICK- JASMINE