Kurt Loder Reviews Blue Jasmine
Blue Jasmine is certainly one of the most arresting of Woody Allen's late-career escape-from-New-York movies. It has the shape of a comedy, and it's often very funny; but as the story proceeds, we come to realize that its protagonist, the titular Jasmine, is someone we can't bear to keep laughing at. Lurching through the film in a haze of delusion and desperation, barely maintaining on a diet of Xanax and vodka, Jasmine is one of Allen's most harrowing characters. Kurt Loder contends that in bringing the character to life on the screen, Cate Blanchett gives a performance that pivots from frazzled to doom-ridden and back with a virtuoso's ease.
