Blue Jasmine (2013)

After suffering a nervous breakdown involving her wealthy husband's (Alec Baldwin) financial downfall and suicide, a woman (Cate Blanchett) attempts to get a fresh start by moving to San Francisco and living with her sister (Sally Hawkins). She is unable to disguise her contempt for her sister's downscale lifestyle and taste for "loser" boyfriends. Woody Allen's latest film is a variant of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE with a juicy role for Cate Blanchett as a woman slowly unraveling before our eyes. Unfortunately, there's not a note of authenticity in Blanchett's performance. True, if you look upon her character a phony (which there is some justification for) then it plays better but even phonies have flashes of honesty. One can see the wheels turning in Blanchett's mannered performance as she carefully connects all the dots like a good little actress but it's a forced performance. It's the kind of acting that Allen's former muses, Keaton and Farrow, did effortlessly. Perhaps the unkindest cut of all is Allen's condemnation of his lead character as a justification of his own peccadilloes. Set in San Francisco (affectionately shot by Javier Aguirresarobe THE OTHERS), one wonders how much time Allen actually spent there as two of his characters (played by Bobby Cannavale and Max Casella) are straight out of Brooklyn rather than the West Coast! Hawkins is pretty terrific here, not only giving the film's best performance but the film's most likable character. With Peter Sarsgaard, Louis C.K., Andrew Dice Clay, Michael Stuhlbarg and Tammy Blanchard.