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Rating: New episode of Woody's vast filmography. In the not-so-flavorful, albeit dignified, late phase of the career of this giant filmmaker, one of the most appreciable moments was represented by the portrait of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, with the wonderful Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine. In the new work, Woody wisely revisits this theme and strengthens it, fleshing out the emotional dimension while not forgetting the material, economic, and pragmatic ones.
Kate Winslet is not inferior to Blanchett in giving expression and physicality to Ginny, a deeply frustrated, unhappy woman, victim of her own wrong actions first, and of convenient choices later. An incapable mother, a complaining wife who stigmatizes her husband and then falls into the same vices, she finds a glimmer of happiness when she meets the handsome Mickey (Justin Timberlake).
But, of course, not everything will go as it should, and Ginny will progressively show her malice, baring her claws to defend her (illusion of) happiness. As with Jasmine four years ago, Allen accurately portrays some of the great, enormous flaws of the fairer sex. False women, terribly attached to money or so vain as to delude themselves into living a dream life with boys twenty years younger.
The director's programmatic choice is appreciable in itself and also for the climate of these years, in which women are always and exclusively victims. This does not mean that men are incorruptible and just; they make mistakes too, but they have a different intellectual honesty. The characters of Timberlake and Jim Belushi (legendary) make mistakes, lose their temper, drink, are double-dealers, and often easily fall for beauty, without caution.
But they know how to recognize their mistakes, they know how to reach a moment of catharsis in which they set aside subterfuges to live rightly, to follow a more honest path. Or, they do not bend their behavior inappropriately for their own sentimental gain. And this is the great accusation Allen levels at certain types of women: their ruthless calculations, adducing pretexts to fight their love rivals. Certain women, not all; there are also the naive lambs like the one played by Juno Temple. But as it happened, for example, in Whatever Works, the young woman is angelic and transparent, while the more experienced and shrewd one knows how to scheme for her goals, both sentimental and material.
Winslet gives everything in her performance, not only with words and expressions but with a body that speaks and tells of the fading of the woman, who suddenly has a surge of love that gives her new bloom. The entire cast is good, while the effectiveness of the lights can be debated, used so emphatically to signal the contrasts between Ginny's warm feelings (and not only hers) and the blue of a repetitive and dreamless life. Because the mischievous woman depicted by Woody lives daily with the poison of having failed artistically, the rejection of a normal life because she is a theater actress.
The very simple direction is also not typically Allenian, especially in the dialogues that often use pure shot-reverse shot. Others, however, enjoy fresher ideas, like those set at home, during which the camera moves more diligently, following the emotional trajectories of the various family members.
The figure of the son Richie, who represents a bit of Woody himself, is beautiful: a troubled boy, who loves to watch things burn and finds peace only in a cinema hall. It's an element that might be underestimated but gives a more systematic view to the film. And so from a disastrous mother and her guy without guidance or discipline, a cinephile pyromaniac, something good might be born, a future genius of the Seventh Art.
Compared to dramas like Match Point, the over-eighty Allen prefers to close his stories without apparent tears. The tears, in reality, are lacerating, but entirely interior: they are the death in the heart of his, terrible, protagonists.
7/10
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