Blue Jasmine - Comedy? Tragedy?

With the world cup happening at the moment there isn't a lot of film watching going on.  Not by me or the rest of the nation either according to taking at UK cinemas.  Takings at cinemas are apparently down over 50% from the same weekend last year.  Well they need not panic, it's the world cup clearly.

Watched Blue Jasmine last week.  Though it's billed as a comedy I don't remember it being all that funny.  It's the story of Jasmine (Cate Blachett), a New York socialite who has a nervous breakdown when her husband's illegal trading activities are found out and he kills himself.  She travels to San Francisco to stay with her half-sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) to try to get back on her feet and rebuild her life.  Though it's meant to be a comedy that isn't particularly funny, I think it's been labelled a comedy for want of a better genre to put it in.  And possibly because films directed by Woody Allen are expected to be comedies.  In reality it's about family ties, mental illness and class.  Not class in the intrinsic British sense that many of us would understand, but class in the American sense of being pretentious, throwing lavish parties and having an expensive dental plan.

I know that Cate Blanchett won an Oscar for her performance here, and though it is probably deserved I would say that Sally Hawkins is the better actress in the film.  I guess Blanchett benefited from the classic syndrome in which playing someone with a mental illness gets you a bunch of extra votes in Hollywood.  Hawkins plays Ginger as a character suffering from her own sort of mental illness though, one in which she doesn't seem sure if she should beat Jasmine or join her in her quest to scale the social ladder and escape from their down-to-earth upbringings.

It's an interesting story, though somewhat inorganically told with its externalised conversations and the opening scene in which Jasmine introduces herself to the audience by talking to a stranger on a plane and telling her about her life up to this moment.  I think Blue Jasmine is meant to be about class, family and being true to yourself as much as it is a drama about mental health.  The trouble is that for me - as a British person - the concept of social class means something totally different to me than what I assume it means to director Woody Allen.  So I think it's going over my head a little.  Regardless, Blue Jasmine is a superbly acted film that's a good watch.  I would give it an 80% recommendation.