My Blueberry Nights

I'd never seen a Wong Kar Wai film before My Blueberry Nights, so I don't have point of reference here. It is a slight, bluesy, moody film that is periodically interesting but is ultimately elusive and disposable.

The film centers on a young woman, played by singer Norah Jones, who is going through a breakup. She finds herself spending evenings at a local cafe, run by Jude Law, and they talk and eat pie (she eats the blueberry, which he tells her is perfectly good but customers always choose something else) late into the night. She longs to travel, and finally just leaves.

Her first stop is Memphis, where she gets two waitressing jobs--in a luncheonette and in a bar. She ends up befriending a cop who is also a self-pitying drunk, David Strathairn. He can't face the end of his marriage to a floozy, Rachel Weisz.

Jones then hops a bus to Nevada, and is working at casino. She ends up getting entangled with a poker player, Natalie Portman, and stakes her to a game, using Portman's car as a collateral. Portman, who trusts no one, and Jones, who trusts everyone, make a sort of odd couple as they head to Vegas to visit Portman's father.

The film is only about ninety minutes long, but seems longer, even though the plot is so simple (simplistic, really). Wong seems less interested in the plot and characters than the colors, brilliantly photographed by Darius Khondji. There is a lot of neon and fluorescent lights that look candy-coated (I think there only a few minutes that are filmed in outdoor sunlight). The character Jones plays is pretty much a blank slate, and perhaps that is why he cast a non-actor in the role. She's perfectly competent, but isn't asked to do much. Instead she observes those around her. Strathairn and Weisz are both very good, and though Portman is game she is miscast as a sort of hard-bitten card shark.

There are also some holes in the plot. Strathairn, at one point, beats a man senseless in the bar. Not only is he not arrested, he's allowed to keep his sidearm though he's blind drunk. Also, Wong makes a point of showing a clock in the casino. It's well-known that casinos don't have clocks, so I wonder if he does that to suggest this some kind of fantasy or dream, rather than a realistic film. That Wong chose three iconic American cities--New York, Memphis, and Las Vegas--as his locations suggest that he is making some sort of statement about America, but if he did it got lost in translation.

Because the film is so short it's worth a look for the photography and mood it creates, but based on Wong's reputation I would imagine this is one of his lesser works.