Blanchett DuBois - Blue Jasmine

Cate Blanchett delivers a remarkable performance in Blue Jasmine, easily Woody Allen's best film in years. Jasmine is the ex-wife of a notorious Bernie Madoff-type character (Alec Baldwin) - now that her husband's empire has collapsed, she's penniless and adrift. Used to a life of complete privilege and indulgence, she's now exiled from New York and descends upon her grocery clerk sister's apartment in San Francisco. To say she's a fish out of water is putting it mildly. Jasmine is Woody's take on Blanche DuBois, a woman whose circumstances and mental state have left her spiraling out of control, careening towards a breakdown. Blanchett makes it the performance of a lifetime. Jasmine can't even begin to relate to the world her sister Ginger (wonderfully played by Sally Hawkins) lives in. It's like she's crash-landed on some other blue collar planet. Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Dice Clay (in a Woody Allen movie!) are both terrific as Ginger's boyfriend and ex-husband - neither of them able to break through Jasmine's class loathing, despite the fact that she's now far poorer than they are.

Allen cuts back and forth from the present in San Francisco, to Jasmine's past life of leisure in Manhattan and the Hamptons. Baldwin is great as her high-rolling husband Hal. He's "into everything," and Jasmine's been blind to it all by the bars of her gilded cage. As Hal's schemes begin to fall apart, Jasmine's eyes start to open, sending her reeling.

Both Jasmine and Ginger have new opportunities enter their lives - seeing each of them navigate the uncertain terrain between dreams of the future and realities of the present is truly compelling, and often quite sad. Not that Blue Jasmine is a bleak tragedy. There are some hilarious moments throughout, as poignant and melancholy as things turn. Louis C. K. and Peter Sarsgaard round out the excellent cast.

It can be challenging to watch a Woody Allen movie without the shadow of his public scandal coloring the experience. When Hal confesses to being in love with their friend's teenage au pair, it rings a little too familiar. Woody Allen continues to be obsessed by female characters. In the short story collection that is Allen's opus of films, Jasmine is one of his most fascinating.