Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) had it all – a billionaire trader husband (Alec Baldwin), a high-achieving stepson (Aldon Ehrenreich), and thousands of miles between her glamorous Manhattan life and her humble beginnings. When the dream collapses, she goes to live with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) in San Francisco, and tries to put her life back together. Blue Jasmine is grounded in a terrific script – to my mind, one of Allen’s best. Few individual lines stand out, because it is woven out of the self justifying slogans and dull, repetitive worries that make up so much of daily life. A few zingers rise above the hum of cliché, but the laugh-out-loud lines are ambiguous and slightly unhinged, ratcheting up rather than releasing the tension. “My biggest mistake was to abandon my studies when I married,” Jasmine tells her skeptical new acquaintances. “What would you have been?” “…An anthropologist.” The follow-up joke about dinosaur bones feels unnecessary. The joke is already on Jasmine, and everyone knows it. 

It’s no surprise that reviewers have compared Blue Jasmine to A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche and Jasmine have each lost a belle reve of ill-gotten wealth. Each is determined to avoid the cold light of day. Jasmine brags about the “social skills” that fit her to the role of wealthy wife, and the cliché sounds desperate – but she’s right. The only skills she has are social. She knows every step in the gavotte of privilege, and she has no choice but to keep dancing, even after the music has stopped. 

No one could doubt Blanchett’s commitment to the role, and perhaps she needs to marshall a certain Vivien Leigh heft to stand up to Bobby Canavale’s Brando-sized performance as Ginger’s antagonistic boyfriend Chilli. But the standout performance is from Hawkins. Ginger’s stolid pragmatism makes her the Socrates of the piece. “If you’re broke,” she asks Jasmine on her arrival, “how did you fly first class?” “I don’t know, Ginger, I just did.” Jasmine’s exasperation is that of every fallen billionaire – oblivious and entitled to the end.

The intercut scenes of Jasmine’s privileged former life are the more uncomfortable for being so recognisably Woody Allen. These Park Avenue socialites are only a few narrow blocks away from the neurotic Upper East Siders who people his previous films. If there is a little late-career venom here from the Bronx-born autodidact gone big, it is subtly administered. Importantly for the balance of the film, however, Jasmine is not the only one brought down by her husband’s dodgy dealings. In the different ways each character weathers the aftermath, Allen crafts a composite picture of life after the financial crisis. Jasmine runs into an old acquaintance of Ginger’s and congratulates him on having found work laying oil pipes in Alaska. His impatience is palpable. “Do you think I want to work up there in the cold? It’s a job.” He’s speaking to someone who still thinks she can bend the world to her will. It’s what a lifetime of ambitious self-belief has trained her for.