Is there a sneaking tendency from even the biggest of Woody Allen fans to wish retirement on the 77 year old? The one-film-a-year, blistering, unprecedented pace of output throughout his career has to most rendered anticipation for any new film equal to apprehension. There’s never any question to the depth of quality in on screen talent wishing to achieve a career goal of sorts and star in a Woody Allen movie – Cate Blanchett waited over a decade for the phone call – but the depth of quality from the man himself in his later stages is famously erratic.

This could easily be the token introduction to any Woody Allen review for the last 20 years and perhaps we’re all as naïve as the title character for being resolutely optimistic towards his new releases. But for all the wasteful, insipid To Rome With Love’s and the lopsided Whatever Works’, a Blue Jasmine every few years makes the trust pay off. The man will always have something to say on camera and it’s worth hearing him out; he’s articulate, astute and passionate as ever in his latest.

Following the destruction of her husband Hal’s (Alec Baldwin) investment business and his subsequent imprisonment, the once effortlessly prosperous Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) has just traded lavish leisure of upper Manhattan for working class San Francisco and moved in with her adopted half-sister Ginger (Hawkins). A volatile change of pace for her, she attempts to rebuild and gain stability to her life both professionally and emotionally which are cleverly interlinked with frequent flashbacks providing insight to her former lifestyle. But it’s never about Jasmine adapting to her new surroundings rather than Jasmine coercing all others into adopting her ideals and getting her own way. The sound of Ginger’s blue collar fiancé Chili, played by the terrific Bobby Cannavale, watching the boxing next door sends her straight to the vodka bottle, the pill jar and into a Stantrum.

Jasmine is an isolated figure in the world. Only able to function with a certain subset of people in a certain type of setting, she’s stunted socially, and psychologically fraught with perseverance. She feels righteously entitled to her past lifestyle but can only delude herself into sustaining it. The Luis Vuitton luggage and Chanel jacket that she constantly attaches to her aren’t mementos or souvenirs, they’re prized possessions. Safety jackets keeping her barely afloat in her fantasy.

But Jasmine is dead, killed in an act of suicide mirrored by her husband and she may as well go back to being called by her birth name Jeanette. Instead she invents another identity, one of convenience for her situation as the tragically widowed, happily childless and successful interior designer in order to maintain composure. What substance is there to this moulting heroine– will she recreate herself in any fashion to maintain a glimmer of her past grandeur?  All her twisted truths are done to such elongated measures that the implosion of fabrication is inevitable, but you still don’t want it to happen to her because there’s a tinge of familiarity there for us in wanting an idyllic and romanticised vision of ourselves in others eyes.

The anti-hero dutifully never quite earns our full sympathy, particularly considering her resentful treatment of Ginger; her deliberate manipulation, her self-centred objectives, her only-surface gratitude. Ginger is almost portrayed as implausibly utopian for Jasmine; admitting with full acceptance that Jasmine got the better genes; showing no bitterness that her $200,000 was squandered by Jasmine; that she has to settle for the likes of Chili when she would prefer more of a gentleman.

She is a fascinating character that Allen deftly uses to juxtapose Jasmine, not only parental aspiration, expectation and outcome but more importantly a juxtaposition of contentedness and successful perseverance. Ginger seems deep down to have aspired to share what Jasmine had, however she has accepted this lacklustre way of life such that Jasmine could never hope to, or perhaps even want to. Sally Hawkins needn’t have proven how splendid she is but she does so once again with a terrifically luminous and touch perfect performance.

But it’s Blanchett who overshadows all others with a spellbinding portrayal of this creature of self-imposed solitude. The self-destructive Jasmine beat herself blue and did an Oscar worthy job of it in an exquisite piece of storytelling by Allen, forming a fascinating and to a degree heart-breaking tale of misery with innocuous laughs and very impressive performances from the whole cast.