2013 Cannes Film Festival Predictions: Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine

#60. Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine

Gist: It’s only been four years, but it feels like ages since Woody Allen has shot one of his films in the USA. Plot details are still under wraps, but the noteworthy tidbit here is that it’s Allen’s first film set in San Francisco, so while he made be grounded in his home country, he’s just as far from his native Bronx with this one as he was with his UK pictures.The cast is typically impressive, with Cate Blanchett topping the line-up (and who will hopefully be in town for another, California-set film…) alongside Alec Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard, Louis C.K., Sally Hawkins, and the list keeps ‘a goin’.

Prediction: Since Hollywood Ending (2002), every third Woody Allen picture has played in Cannes (always Out of Competition; Woody doesn’t like for his films to compete…except for Oscar statues which he has no control over). So superstition and statistics would tell us that we’ll have to wait until next year’s Allen picture before we see him in Cannes again, since it was only two years ago that his Midnight in Paris earned its wholly unwarranted reputation as a ‘return to form’ when it opened the 2011 festival. Alas, Blue Jasmine is opening in US theatres at the end of July and doesn’t, at the moment, have any Italian unveilings to satisfy an exotic premiere (cf. last year’s stinker, To Rome with Love), so we won’t be at all surprised if we see Woody back sooner than ritual would indicate.