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A final April Showers for the month. Here's Ilich on Blue Jasmine (2013).
Blue Jasmine takes on the narrative of Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire and removes it from its intended New Orleans setting to soak it in the San Francisco coastline. It's there that Jasmine (formerly Jeanette, always Cate Blanchett) reluctantly calls her sister's place home after her socialite life in New York City less than gently escorts her out. Water and cleansing are only a couple of the elements used to contrast her former, generously sponsored life in the city—shown in abrupt flashbacks throughout—against her less sophisticated past and current unraveling.
It's a paralyzing shower that sets Blanchett's Jasmine up for her last scene, but both mean little without the context provided before that give us an insight into Jasmine's aspirations and self-destructive habits. The film is as fascinated with its lead's denial as we are with Blanchett's performance...
The actress, so used to adorning her performance with tics and affection is perfectly cast here as a woman performing to convince others of many things she isn't in both the best and worst stages of her life. And in case Blanchett's eyes in the poster or the film's soundtrack didn't scream it loud enough, she's blue, dammit!
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Helping set up blow of the film's closing scene, costume designer Suzy Benzinger shows Jasmine's Chanel blazer during better times (for both it and Jasmine) during a flashback where she casually discusses her attendance to the Met Gala with a then-equally well-off friend. At this point, we've already seen the blazer look less exquisite in the film's opening scene up in the air. But here, on top of being accessorized by Chanel pearls and blowout, it's lit to look cleaner and more expensive than when Jasmine wears subsequently it in San Francisco. It's about to go through some life and it won't come out of it as pretty.
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The first time we see Jasmine getting clean is in a flashback where she's getting bubbles all over her new diamonds. Notably, she's taking a bath because, you know, rich people have time for that kind of thing and also this is a prestige drama with a female lead so this tableau is requisite. At this point in her life, taking a bath isn't a luxury for her. She can take the hour to soak in her privilege and ignore the havoc she vaguely knows her husband is wreaking. Their wealth is noisy enough to suffocate whatever amount of their conscience directs them to the right thing.
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Her next cleansing has less gold accents. Crammed into the unflattering shower at her sister's house, there's very little room for Jasmine to move. Her husband has gone to jail and killed himself after leaving her with close to nothing. The few connections that remained after that—her sister, her stepson, her short-lived engagement—were all sabotaged by the lies that so easily rolled out of her and the aspirations that she wasn't designed to reach on her own. Now, the noise of the shower isn't close to enough to drown out the voices in her head that she's been left alone with.
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Crushed by her own tragedy, Jasmine goes out into the world with nothing left to lose yet without the ability to build much more. Her reality escapes her and can't yet tether her to a happy ending.
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I used to know the words. I knew the words. Now they're all a jumble.