Best of 2013: #7. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)

#7. Blue Jasmine. Woody Allen. USA.

After nearly giving up on Woody Allen after suffering through the infuriatingly awful Midnight in Paris, Blue Jasmine takes the director away from bubbly-ol’ Europe to a somewhat imaginary San Francisco where he treads upon a dark exploration of women with a breezy touch in place of the usual Ingmar Bergman nods that have accompanied his similar tales. As the titular Jasmine, Cate Blanchett smolders, living up to the near unanimous praise and award season buzz that has surrounded her performance.

I wrote about Blue Jasmine previously on the blog. Blue Jasmine will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on 21 January from Sony in the U.S. and 29 January in France via TF1 Vidéo.

With: Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Peter Sarsgaard, Louis C.K., Andrew Dice Clay, Michael Stuhlbarg, Max Casella, Alden Ehrenreich, Tammy Blanchard, Joy Carlin, Richard Conti

Love and Death; or How to Find Yourself Crazed on the Streets of San Francisco

Blue Jasmine

2013, USA

Woody Allen

Sometime in the 1980s or possibly the early 1990s, Woody Allen shifted from being a "sure bet" to a "mixed bag." Some people might attest that the process of aging and its effects to the body and mind can account for the sort of decline we sometimes see in artists' work during their later years. I'm not sure we'll ever know what, if anything, is to blame, but somewhere after Hannah and Her Sisters, Allen's films started missing their mark; perhaps it was shortly after Allen's messy divorce with the second major muse of his career, Mia Farrow. At the rate of nearly a film per year, it's to be expected that not every one would succeed, though a few of the films (that I've seen) that came after Farrow reached the heights of his early greats (Deconstructing Harry, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Bullets Over Broadway, possibly Mighty Aphrodite).

Allen may have seen enormous success with his 2011 outing Midnight in Paris, which awarded the filmmaker his first Academy Award in twenty-five years and went on to be the most profitable film of his career. Despite these accomplishments, Midnight in Paris brought me to make the claim that I had given up on any further projects the director had left in him. It wasn't just that I disliked the film; it made me want to go to Home Depot, buy a bunch of lightbulbs, and smash them in the parking lot. There were other things going on in my life that might have amplified the violence I felt, but my hatred was genuine. With Blue Jasmine however, the fact that I even considered seeing it was the first indication of how premature the bullheaded proclamation I made was. Blue Jasmine is almost good enough to have erased the memory of grumbling, cringing, and sighing my way through Owen Wilson's magically tedious tour of Parisian history. Almost.

The first thing about Blue Jasmine that should be mentioned—as it has been by nearly every person I know who's seen it—is its star, Cate Blanchett. As most of us are aware, she ranks among a very small list of actresses in Hollywood today who can always be counted on to be somewhere near wonderful, no matter how good or bad the film the film she's in might be. As Jasmine, née Jeanette, Blanchett's performance is the sort of thing to elicit the most enthusiastic of gay squeals. She embodies all of the things that make the gays melt in their theatre chairs. She's beautiful, unbalanced, reeling from a tragic marriage, mentally unstable, alcohol and pill dependent, viper-tongued, and oblivious to her own absurdity, all while traveling down a road that dances on the ultra-thin line that separates redemption from degradation. Oh, and she also has a really expensive wardrobe. But it's not the character alone that would make the gays extend the vowel sounds in the word "amazing" while describing the film, it's Blanchett's possession of Jasmine that makes it so outstanding.

Ostensibly an update of A Streetcar Named Desire set during our current economic crisis, the film begins with Jasmine's relocation to San Francisco to move in with her sister Ginger (a wonderful-as-usual Sally Hawkins) after losing all of her money and possessions to the government after her wealthy businessman husband (Alec Baldwin) is arrested for fraud. She's clearly on a downward spiral, but it's unclear how close to rock bottom she actually is… or if there even is a bottom to land on. It takes a while into the film before one begins to recognize the weight of the drama at hand, as Blue Jasmine isn't drenched in the sort of stark Bergman-esque tone of Interiors.

Handling the film with a light touch and taking his time to expose the severity of Jasmine's situation, Allen turns Blue Jasmine into a much darker Midnight in Paris, exploring the wounded psyche of his protagonist. He cuts between Jasmine's life in San Francisco and her life of privilege in the Hamptons, slowly unveiling the fact that what initially appear to be flashbacks are actually scenes of Jasmine's life that she's reliving and replaying. When you realize that you're seeing what's happening in Jasmine's head, you begin to see all of her fears of appearance, gossip, and other people's judgments reaffirm themselves. Though she never explicitly acknowledges these fears (looking the other way is one of her specialties), the film tells us that everyone around Jasmine knows exactly what's going on in her life and that it's a pretty hot discussion topic. An early scene where Jasmine is at the airport talking all about herself to the unlucky old woman seated next to her really struck me as the camera veers away from Jasmine at the baggage claim to capture a brief dialogue exchange between the old woman and her husband about the "strange woman" hollering goodbye to her. Throughout the film, it appears that everyone else is privy to intimate details of the sordid life of her husband, as well as Jasmine's own shaky mental state, though this too could be all in Jasmine's head. It's almost as if the truth about Jasmine's life exists everywhere but in her own delusional mind.

For anyone who has spent any time in San Francisco, Jasmine's fate at the end of the film has a sobering ring of truth to it. A friend remarked after seeing the film that he had to suspend disbelief when people on the street stop to watch Jasmine have a breakdown outside the dentist's office, because such outward displays of crazy are so commonplace in San Francisco that few would have taken much notice. Granted, it isn't every day one sees that sort of eruption from someone who looks like Cate Blanchett. I don't believe one needs to have lived in San Francisco to be haunted by the closing scene, but for those who have, it certainly provides an extra layer of bleakness to the experience. I guess Allen will never cease to be on my radar, and I'm okay with that.

Though we didn't feel the same way, I highly recommend that you read Jonathan Rosenbaum's assessment of Blue Jasmine and Allen's class obsession.

With: Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Peter Sarsgaard, Louis C.K., Andrew Dice Clay, Michael Stuhlbarg, Max Casella, Alden Ehrenreich, Tammy Blanchard, Joy Carlin, Richard Conti

Drug Addicts, Nymphos, Tomboys, and Paul Verhoeven: 5 More Netflix Suggestions

A friend of mine who just finished school asked me if I could suggest some films for him to watch on Netflix Instant. Here are five more recommendations. Each of the films below were available on Netflix Instant in the USA at the time this was published.

Oslo, August 31st
Oslo, 31. august
2011, Norway
Joachim Trier

Joachim Trier's second film, following the marvelous Reprise (also available on Instant), readapts Pierre Drieu La Rochelle's novel Le feu follet (famously made for the screen by Louis Malle in 1963, as well as a little-seen made-for-French-television version in 1994), updating it to modern day Norway, chronicling roughly twenty-four-or-so hours in the life of recovering drug addict Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) who is given leave from rehab for the first time in what appears to have been a while to interview for a job. Intimate and heartbreaking without being too austere, Oslo, August 31st is an assured, exceptional sophomore effort from the distant cousin of Lars von Trier and certainly one of the better films of 2011.

With: Anders Danielsen Lie, Hans Olav Brenner, Ingrid Olavs, Øystein Røger, Malin Crépin, Tone B. Mostraum, Kjærsti Odden Skjeldal, Johanne Kjellevik Ledang, Petter Width, Renate Reinsve, Anders Borchgrevink, Emil Lund, Andreas Braaten

 

The Music Lovers
1970, UK
Ken Russell

The late, great Ken Russell's own description of The Music Lovers as a film about a homosexual who falls in love with a nymphomaniac does accurately summarize this loose biopic of Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain), but The Music Lovers is so much more. I was lucky enough to have seen a beautiful print of the film at the Castro Theater earlier this year, which is truly the ideal way to watch any of Ken Russell's films (up to a point), but don't let that stop you from watching it at home. Following Tchaikovsky and his wife Nina (brilliantly played by Glenda Jackson), Russell surrounds these two individuals with a number of impossible love affairs, each of them branching off their own doomed marriage, which was unsuccessfully consummated in a riveting sequence on a train. Along with The Devils, The Music Lovers is one of the finest examples of Russell's signature style: frenzied, operatic, dazzling, cinematic decadence (at its finest).

With: Richard Chamberlain, Glenda Jackson, Max Adrian, Christopher Gable, Izabella Telezynska, Kenneth Colley, Maureen Pryor, Sabina Maydelle, Andrew Faulds, Bruce Robinson

 

Starship Troopers
1997, USA
Paul Verhoeven

Paul Verhoeven has only made one bad film in his entire career, and that was Hollow Man. So if anyone says that Showgirls, RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, or Starship Troopers are bad films, rest assured that they're just plain wrong. Starship Troopers has everything you need in a film. It's enormously entertaining, weirdly erotic, intentionally hilarious (I've heard people try to say otherwise... again, they're wrong), kind of gross, and "secretly" really smart, which accurately describes all of Verhoeven's best work. Take for instance Rue McClanahan as an eye-patch-donning biology teacher, or Denise Richards as the good-girl brainiac Carmen Ibanez (all of the film's main characters come from a futuristic Buenos Aires where everyone is as American as they come, though still retaining Spanish names).

With: Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Patrick Muldoon, Neil Patrick Harris, Jake Busey, Clancy Brown, Michael Ironside, Marshall Bell, Rue McClanahan, Seth Gilliam, Brenda Strong, Lenore Kasdorf, Amy Smart

Love and Death
1975, USA/France
Woody Allen

In my personal favorite Woody Allen film, Stardust Memories, Allen's character is hounded by a bunch of annoying fans, one of whom complains that they preferred his "older, funnier movies." Love and Death is the best of Allen's actual "older, funnier movies," a hysterical farce about a bumbling coward (played by Allen), in love with his slutty cousin (Diane Keaton), who joins the Russian army to try to defeat Napoleon. It's a great mix of visual humor, common in his early works, and the quick wit he's best known for.

With: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Olga Georges-Picot, Harold Gould, Tony Jay, Jessica Harper, Henri Coutet, Despo Diamantidou, Féodor Atkine, Alfred Lutter, James Tolkan

Tomboy
2011, France
Céline Sciamma

It's no easy feat trying to depict the essence of adolescence on film without seeming too distant or nostalgic. Céline Sciamma's Tomboy does a rather exceptional job capturing the spirit of being a child, somewhere on your way to puberty. The French have always had a knack for this, from François Truffaut (not my favorite filmmaker by any means, but I still admire the way he films "la jeunesse") to films like Jacques Doillon's Ponette. In Tomboy, ten-year-old Laure (played by Zoé Héran, who already looks like a haute-couture runway model), a tall, lanky, androgynous girl, moves to a new town where she is mistaken for a boy by the neighborhood children and decides to invent a new identity for herself as Mikaël. Tomboy is considerably more interesting when it shows the interactions between the children; both its story and its lesson, while neither of them as obvious as you may think, are secondary.

With: Zoé Héran, Malonn Lévana, Jeanne Disson, Sophie Cattani, Mathieu Demy, Yohan Ventre, Noah Ventre, Cheyenne Lainé, Ryan Bonbeleri, Jeanne Dison

The 2010 Cannes Film Festival in Posters, Round 2

Here are 34 more posters for films playing at this year's Cannes Film Festival. All are new titles, aside from Somos lo que hay [We Are What We Are] as I found a different, larger poster for it. From the competition, we have La princesse de Montpensier, Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (thanks ouiouioui!) and Hors-la-loi (which leaves only Another Year, Fair Game, Chongqing Blues, Route Irish and My Joy un-represented in that section). From the Cannes Classics section: La 315ème section, Psycho, The Leopard, Boudu Saved from Drowning, Tristana, La compagne de Ciceron, Le grand amour, The Tin Drum, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The African Queen, Au petit bonheur and La bataille du rail. The rest: O Estranho Caso de Angélica, Bedevilled (which might be the cover sheet of a press booklet), Benda Bilili!, Chatroom (easily the worst reviewed film at the festival so far), Aurora, Le quattro volte, Octubre, Sandcastle, Picco, Simon Werner a disparu..., La casa muda, Unter dir die Stadt, The Wanderer, Udaan, Los labios, Marţi, după Crăciun and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. There may be one more update when the festival closes.

Cannes Line-Up 2010

The films have been announced, and while my suspicions yesterday were premature, I suppose the absence of Béla Tarr's latest is the only real surprise (granted it was going to be hard to surprise me as I wasn't following what was expected to be showing this year). In the Competition line-up, Mike Leigh and Abbas Kiarostami are the only former Palme d'Or winners, but many other previous award recipients, such as Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nikita Mikhalkov, Bertrand Tavernier and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, will be presenting their films. New films from Jean-Luc Godard, Manoel de Oliveira, Lodge Kerrigan, Hong Sang-soo, Radu Muntean, Cristi Puiu and one of last year's big winners Xavier Dolan will be shown in the Un Certain Regard section, and the latest from Woody Allen, Stephen Frears, Oliver Stone and Gregg Araki will also be shown out of competition. The line-ups are below.

Another Year, d. Mike Leigh, UK, w. Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton
Biutiful, d. Alejandro González Iñárritu, USA, w. Javier Bardem, Blanca Portillo
Burnt by the Sun 2, d. Nikita Mikhalkov, Russia
Copie conforme [Certified Copy], d. Abbas Kiarostami, Iran/France/Italy, w. Juliette Binoche
Des hommes et des dieux [Of Gods and Men], d. Xavier Beauvois (Le petit lieutenant), France, w. Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Roschdy Zem
Fair Game, d. Doug Liman, USA, w. Naomi Watts, Sean Penn
Hors-la-loi [Outside the Law] d. Rachid Bouchareb (Days of Glory), France/Algeria/Belgium, w. Jamel Debbouze, Roschy Zem, Sami Bouajila
Housemaid, d. Im Sang-soo (The President's Last Bang), South Korea
La nostra vita, d. Daniele Luchetti (My Brother Is an Only Child), Italy, w. Raoul Bova, Elio Germano, Riccardo Scamarcio
Outrage, d. Takeshi Kitano, Japan, w. Kitano, Jun Kunimura
Poetry, d. Lee Chang-dong (Oasis), South Korea
La princesse de Montpensier, d. Bertrand Tavernier, France/Germany, w. Gaspard Ulliel, Lambert Wilson
Tournée, d. Mathieu Amalric, France, w. Amalric, Damien Odoul
Un homme qui crie [A Screaming Man], d. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Abouna), Chad
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand
You. My Joy, d. Sergei Loznitsa (Revue), Ukraine

Un Certain Regard

Les amours imaginaires [Heartbeats], d. Xavier Dolan, Canada, w. Dolan
Aurora, d. Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu), Romania, w. Puiu
Blue Valentine, d. Derek Cianfrance, USA, w. Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams
Chatroom, d. Hideo Nakata (Dark Water), UK
Chongqing Blues, d. Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle), China
O Estranho Caso de Angélica [The Strange Case of Angelica], d. Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal
Film socialisme, d. Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/France, w. Patti Smith
Life Above All, d. Oliver Schmitz (Paris je t'aime)
Los labios, d. Ivan Fund, Santiago Loza, Argentina
Ha Ha Ha, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea
Marţi, după Crăciun [Tuesday, After Christmas], d. Radu Muntean (Boogie), Romania, w. Dragos Bucur
Octubre, d. Daniel Vega
Pál Andrienn [Adrienn Pál], d. Ágnes Kocsis (Fresh Air), Hungary/Netherlands/France/Austria, w. Éva Gábor
R U There, d. David Verbeek (Shanghai Trance), Taiwan
Rebecca H. (Return to the Dogs), d. Lodge Kerrigan, USA
Simon Werner a disparu..., d. Fabrice Gobert
Udaan, d. Vikramaditya Motwane, India
Unter dir die Stadt [The City Below], d. Christoph Hochhäusler (I Am Guilty), Germany

Out of Competition

Tamara Drewe, d. Stephen Frears, UK
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, d. Oliver Stone, USA, w. Michael Douglas, Shia LaBoeuf, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Charlie Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Frank Langella, Vanessa Ferlito
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, d. Woody Allen, USA/Spain, w. Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins

Midnight

L'autre monde [Blackhole], d. Gilles Marchand (Who Killed Bambi?), France, w. Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Melvil Poupaud
Kaboom, d. Gregg Araki, USA/France, w. James Duval, Roxane Mesquida, Kelly Lynch

Special Screenings

Abel, d. Diego Luna, Mexico
Chantrapas, d. Otar Iosseliani
Draquila - l'italia che trema, d. Sabina Guzzanti, Italy
Inside Job, d. Charles Ferguson
Nostalgia de la luz [Nostalgia for the Light], d. Patricio Guzmán, France
Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, d. Sophie Fiennes (The Pervert's Guide to Cinema), Netherlands