In the Pantheon of Great Female Lead Crack-Ups, along with Scarlett O'Hara and Gloria Swanson, the character Jasmine might think she should be included. But alas, she overplayed her hand and goes Full Retard. And that unfortunately is an automatic DQ.
Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine whose world has crumbled from her New York society life after her husband Hal was discovered to be... Bernie Madoff. So she loses everything (somehow) and has to move to San Francisco to live with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins).
It's sort of a Sex in the City after the financial meltdown. The shell remains (or rather the Chanel) but the spirit is gone, if there was any to begin with. Jasmine drinks and pops prescription pills so often and reflexively that you can't appreciate if the mental illness is real or just a prop.
Men are Slime of course here. They're either cheaters, or ineffective and abusive, or wimps, or unambititious, or dupes. Ginger's two children are window dressing, used primarily as a Greek chorus to further the beginning of the story.
Hard to say how this can be more than the Ruth Madoff Story with the specificness of Jasmine's demise.
* * 1/2
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