Wong Kar Wai’s films are most closely related to poetry – nonlinear, dreamy, sumptuous. Rather than making the film’s elements subservient to plot, Wong plays with lighting, color, editing, speed, and sound to cast a mood, allowing the audience to intuit the story, rather than simply tell it to them, and interpreting the adage “show, don’t tell” in his own distinct way. My Blueberry Nights is the internationally acclaimed Hong Kong director’s first English-language film, though his earlier work (including In the Mood for Love and 2046) has garnered a modest but rabid global following.

Elizabeth (Norah Jones), heartbroken and lonely, spends her evenings in a tiny New York café talking and eating blueberry pie with the proprietor, Jeremy (Jude Law), who has his own story of lost love. In an effort to break free of her sadness, Elizabeth travels to Memphis, where she waits tables, tends bar, and catches the tail end of Arnie and SueLynn’s tragic marriage (David Strathairn and Rachel Weisz). In Nevada she meets Leslie (Natalie Portman), a big-talking, high-flying Nevada gambler, before making peace with her past and turning her face toward New York again.

Though Elizabeth’s travels take her across the country and back - on the open road, under hazy bar lights, backlit by neon signs, and in the inky blackness of a New York night – there’s no real pretense at historical or geographic accuracy. Instead, he’s created a dream world, succulent and filled with lovely, sad women, a world in which romance and love ebb and flow slowly and stickily. Jones isn’t a great actress, but she certainly has expressive eyes and a sweet demeanor fitting to her character. In fact, all of Wong’s female actresses look uncannily, attractively alike, in keeping with his fluid fantasy of beauty. Jude Law is merely lovable, but Strathairn stands out against the rest with a heartbreaking performance.

The whole movie doesn’t hang together quite right, but there are enough truly lovely moments to make the rest seem forgivable. My Blueberry Nights isn’t destined to top Wong’s canon or anyone’s best films list, but like a big piece of blueberry pie, it goes down easy and leaves one with a smile.

	Topic: Movies & TV, Reviews		Email a friend
	Keywords: Jude Law, Norah Jones, Wong Kar Wai		RSS 2.0
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