Blue Jasmine (2013)

The Woody Allen archetype is one of the most lucid cinematic creations of the last 50 years. It is the big screen extension of Allen’s early stand-up career, the neurotic ramblings of which crossed over successfully onto his filmic characters, drawing knowing laughs from the nervous-wreck component in the psyche of everyone who saw them. Often – especially in his early films – Allen would play these characters himself but, even when deciding to remain behind the camera, fast-talking anxiety-ridden anti-heroes still pepper his work.

Plenty of darkness follows these characters through their tribulations and Allen has always laced shades of tragedy through the scripts he writes – his most celebrated style is a kind of gloomy light-heartedness – but nothing of his I’ve seen explores the back story and motivations of his muse with as much mastery and depth as Blue Jasmine.

The film essentially grabs the psychological turmoil of his lead, Jasmine Francis, from the incidental and thrusts it right into the spotlight before examining it at close quarters. Cate Blanchett is compelling as the eponymous character who is forced into taking refuge in the home of her adopted sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins), when her life as a New York socialite married to an obscenely wealthy financier (Alec Baldwin) crumbles as a result of her husband’s downfall and disgrace. There is comedy of course, but this rather seeps through the tragedy rather than vice versa.

Jasmine is at once a terrifying and immensely sympathetic character, eliciting grimaces from the audience the deeper she digs her holes. On the surface, she has an honest effort at rebuilding her life, working thanklessly as a dentist’s receptionist to support her computer classes which she takes with a view to becoming an interior designer. Nevertheless her neuroses won’t yield and, simply unable to adjust to a life lower down in the socio-economic scale, she aids her own mind’s disintegration with a dependency on Xanax and alcohol which deepens the more face she tries to save. (The exact nuances of a person lonely and depressed and how consummately Allen and Blanchett observe them deserve to be written about at length and in depth and hopefully have been/will be elsewhere.)

In the score, the familiar lounge jazz of many Woody Allen films dovetails between scenes in a way anempathetic to Jasmine’s plight but sometimes coming across as a sigh at the inevitability of her decline.

I see three tones balanced impeccably throughout the film, the first is the drama/tragedy that impels the narrative, second is comedy and third is horror. In a way, Blue Jasmine really is a horror film and the laughs are served up and indulged in as a reaction to the terror of losing one’s mind, catching in the throat as soon as they rise. My favourite scene demonstrates this powerfully. Jasmine sits in a café babysitting her two nephews and begins (as she often does) drunkenly drifting into a monologue as if the boys were not present. They sit open-mouthed as she waxes on about the song ‘Blue Moon’ and her life’s ambitions. Suddenly she is present and advises the boys to be generous when they become wealthy. When they respond “mom said you used to be OK but then you got crazy”, the look on her face is more terrifying than her wide-eyed Galadriel close-up in The Fellowship of the Ring with none of that moment’s surprise factor needed. As she finishes “there’s only so many traumas a person can withstand until they take to the streets and start screaming” the audience’s reaction is a confused mixture of laughter, tears and recoil. That response adequately sums up the film.

Side Effects (2013)

All artists – directors especially – run the risk of becoming too precious with their output. Reticent to send out into the world something that doesn’t exactly embody their style/outlook or fully display their talents, they can find the gaps between pieces of work starting to increase. Years soon pass with no new releases. Eventually, if the one film every six (or more) years isn’t gold dust, it can just about finish a perfectionist off.

Steven Soderbergh, it seems, experiences no such creative block. Side Effects is his 5^th film in 2 years and it isn’t bad either. If nothing else, Soderbergh deserves credit for the solid consistency of his work and the drive and ambition with which he dives into each new project.

This said, there is often a feeling of slight disappointment upon leaving most of Soderbergh’s recent films. They seem to promise something special and original before settling into one of many well constructed but well-worn narrative paths about halfway through.

The Side Effects trailer invites one to expect a scathing attack on the pharmaceutical industry and a story that perhaps focuses on the negative consequences of prescribing brain chemistry-altering drugs to depressed individuals. The film does begin with this set up but somewhere along the way abandons any serious agenda in favour of the twists and turns of a traditional thriller. It gives the impression of being through composed from start to finish, with writer Scott Z. Burns unable to follow through on his original idea so juicing it up with one shocking revelation after another for his own amusement.

Acting is typically dependable from stars such as Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Channing Tatum. The screenplay is a little hammy and much of the dialogue doesn’t ring true but the cracks are capably papered over by the cast. Given what seems like the fewest lines and handed the arguably easy task of looking distraught for much of the film, Rooney Mara gives the most believable performance. She plays Emily, a woman prescribed ‘Ablixa’, a trial antidepressant with some undesirable side effects. As a tragedy unfolds, Emily’s doctor Jonathan (Jude Law) faces charges of negligence and the motives of everyone involved are gradually untangled (then re-tangled and finally re-untangled).

The thing that holds Side Effects together once its narrative begins to slip is Steven Soderbergh’s workmanship as a director and editor. The film is well put together by a man who knows how to tell a story. This makes it enjoyable long after you realise that the controversial issue-based drama you were sold isn’t quite what is being delivered to your eyes and ears.

Whatever genre it begins in, the film ends up as a sort of neo-noir with yellow (not black) washing out all else in the colour palette. I quite like this. Soderbergh did the same thing with Contagion, using some sort of filter throughout the film to jaundice almost every shot. It makes the film look ill and is very effective although not necessarily appealing to the eye. Its phlegmy aesthetic is just one of I’m sure many little tricks the director uses to give the film its shape and consistency.

Side Effects may not be the film you were expecting to see, but it is a good watch. Although the themes it touches upon may provoke an afternoon on Wikipedia, the film itself doesn’t clarify or engage in such debates as “how to treat depression” or “who benefits from prescribing certain medications – the patient or the pharmaceuticals?” It simply exploits this subject matter to fuel a thriller – albeit an enjoyable one.