Oh how wonderful it would be, the film suggests, if we could all have nice things. Instead, there is an aspirational quality to the filming, with loving depictions of wealthy New York - homes in the Hamptons, the impeccably designed apartment in the city, Jasmine’s exquisite wardrobe, ladies lunching.
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While the film is supposed to be some kind of high-minded critique of excessive consumption and who pays the real price for the wealthy to remain wealthy, the movie falls desperately but unapologetically short of that ambition. "Blue Jasmine" is very much one of those movies trying to make a subtle statement that ends up doing the opposite. By the end of the movie, which is short but feels interminable, very little has happened and nothing much matters. It’s a good enough movie in that bland way of Woody Allen, which is to say "Blue Jasmine" is competent but largely uninspired. Jasmine, née Jeanette, is forced to move in with her working-class sister, Ginger, in San Francisco. It is the more mannered response to America’s recent economic collapse than, say, "The Dark Knight." Jasmine is a woman of means and leisure but the façade of her life crumbles when her husband, Hal, a philandering financier running a Ponzi scheme, is revealed as a fraud.
In Woody Allen’s latest film, "Blue Jasmine, " the wealthy supposedly get their comeuppance.