CinemaCinema Review
Blue Jasmine
Woody Allen’s later movies are proving to be predictably erratic. His last, set in Rome, was a dismal affair, but the one preceding it, in Paris, was sublime. As for Barcelona… well, let’s just not go there. Back on home soil, he has this time delivered what might come to be regarded as a signature work – when he’s good he’s great, and this is vintage. As an artist who has maintained an affectionate high regard for his predecessors, Allen enjoys nothing better than to re-invent seminal characters
from cinema’s past. Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) is a New York socialite who has fallen on hard times following the arrest and suicide of her wheeler-dealer husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin). On the turps, broke and going to pieces, she lobs at her half-sister’s cosy but downmarket flat in San Francisco. She imposes herself regally on Ginger (Sally Hawkins), whose marriage was a victim of Hal’s skullduggery, and comes between her and her rowdy, roughhouse boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale) – it is
Blanche Dubois, Stella and Stanley Kowalski all over again. Unusually for Allen, the story’s structure includes a high number of time jumps that take us from the present to when Hal and Jasmine were major players on Wall Street and Park Avenue. The transitions are handled smoothly and an easy rhythm is established early and maintained throughout. Jasmine is not easy to like – she is far too deluded and judgmental – which makes it difficult to feel sympathy for her. Damaged people need
special treatment and Allen, you suspect, is pleading for forgiveness for Jasmine and in the last disturbing scene he very nearly wins it. But is there a limit to what we can we expect from or give to others? And how do we know when we’ve reached it? Blanchett pushes the envelope to an uncomfortable degree in her best part for a ages, but equally good are Hawkins and Cannavale – as a spindly little bird and bull in a china shop, they are perfectly matched. ~ John Campbell
belly-laughs, and its central character is preoccupied with a long-standing, non-sexual relationship with another woman. Frances (Greta Gerwig) is a 27-year-old
postgraduate dancer who is living from hand to mouth in Brooklyn. She has been sharing an apartment with Sophie (Mickey Sumner), another ‘undateable’, and together they are, in their own words, like an old lesbian couple. Frances’s lack of cash is in conflict with her flighty but faltering aspiration to be a choreographer – and her focus does not include finding Mr Right. That a female protagonist might not be consumed by searching for a guy is a radical, overdue departure for the genre and it allows Frances to be seen as much more than just a girl waiting to fall into a bloke’s arms. After splitting up with
Sophie, Frances is ‘lost’, in the sense that she does not know whither she is drifting. She smokes, drinks probably too much and, though socially adept, she is lonely – the brief interlude in which she goes into debt to cover a weekend in Paris poignantly conveys the isolation she feels. Frances, however, is a survivor and, even with her at times annoying traits, you can’t help hoping the best for her. Gerwig co-wrote the screenplay and it’s hard to imagine that there is not more than a hint of autobiography in the story, especially given her mesmerising performance. She is also drop-dead gorgeous and
Frances Ha Noah Baumbach’s delightful new film might loosely be classified as a romantic comedy. But it’s wittier than the standard offering without ever striving for
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24 September 17, 2013 The Byron Shire Echo
Sam Levy’s seductive B&W cinematography highlights her subtle drifts between strength and frailty. When Frances finally has a work staged off-Broadway, the result is emotionally affecting in a way that I’ve not experienced in watching
contemporary dance. The trickiest challenge for all of us as we negotiate life’s ebb and flow is to be ourselves. Frances, when it is not always the easiest path, rises to that challenge. I loved her for it and I loved her movie. ~ John Campbell
art direction, but it has a curious emptiness. Hardly anything happens. Scott, a pretty face from Wisconsin, is introduced to Lee, Lee has him move into his Las Vegas palazzo and they share a relationship that is in the beginning passionate, then merely intimate and ultimately, as Scott falls into drug addiction, destructive. Director Steven Soderbergh is sympathetic to both of his subjects without delving very deeply into what shaped their personalities. Liberace might as easily
have been a baseballer for any emphasis that is placed on his music, but maybe he was really like that – just all bling. Rob Lowe’s reptilian plastic surgeon will make your blood run cold. Splendidly trite. ~ John Campbell
Behind The Candelabra Michael Douglas took on an enormously tough assignment when accepting the part of Liberace. How do you portray a larger-than-life celebrity whose career was built on excess without giving the impression that you are acting over the top? He succeeds admirably, managing to be as camp as a row of tents without resorting at any point to a limp wrist. Matt Damon as Scott, his livein lover of six years, brings to the character his usual woodchuck earnestness, but he too, miraculously boyish-looking in the early stages, is totally convincing, particularly when the men have their spats. What is hardest to get your head around – remembering that
it was as recent as 1987 that Liberace died from complications arising from the AIDS virus, but that society’s mores have moved on rapidly since the famous piano player was at his peak – is that any of his doting fans could for one minute have believed that Liberace was not gay. His manager worked tirelessly to convince people that he was merely an eccentric dresser who had not yet found the right woman. As elephants in the room go, it’s as strange as a shock-jock radio bully hiding his closet-dwelling homosexuality from his numbskull listeners. Whatever – this is an extremely easy movie to be drawn into, thanks entirely to the performances and lavish
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