Half baked

>>Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights
is pretty but tedious

by MARK SLUTSKY

You can’t mess with the genius of the greater part of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai’s filmography. Films like Fallen Angels, Days of Being Wild and Chung King Express, made with brilliant cinematographer Christopher Doyle, combined neon-streaked visual poetry with a pop music sensibility and a sense of gorgeous melancholy: no one made films as pretty and sad.

But after 2000’s magnificent In the Mood for Love, something seems to have happened to the director. The endlessly delayed 2046 seemed so promising—a sci-fi-flavoured sequel to In the Mood for Love—but was ultimately Wong’s worst picture yet, a shambling self-parody that showed how delicately balanced the director’s seemingly messy better films were. After that, a break with Doyle, and his first American film, My Blueberry Nights, which opens this week.

My Blueberry Nights is notable not only for its American setting, but its star, the jazz singer Norah Jones, who acts here for the first time. She plays a lovelorn New Yorker who, after breaking up with her boyfriend, takes solace in the blueberry pies of soulful diner owner Jude Law. Then, she hits the road, becoming a small but important player in the stories of drunken Memphis couple David Strathairn and Rachel Weisz, and compulsive gambler Natalie Portman, whose experiences guide her journey of self-discovery.

Even without Doyle’s participation, Wong’s signature visuals are on display here: neon lights at night, reflections, bright splashes of colour standing out in the darkness, blurred slow-mo. No, he hasn’t lost his touch for painting on the screen. But that doesn’t mean My Blueberry Nights is by any means a return to form.

While Wong has assembled a fine cast here, they don’t have much to do. Jones is… well, she’s not a revelation, but she doesn’t embarrass herself either, though she feels outclassed by her more experienced co-stars. Problem is their stories just feel rambling and tedious, an outsider slice of Americana that is neither insightful nor moving.

Blueberry pies, Memphis bars, Vegas casinos: it isn’t clear what we’re supposed to be taking from these images, and maybe Wong’s vision of Hong Kong is just as exotified. But, at least to these eyes, his earlier films offered something new and exciting; this just feels second-hand.

My Blueberry Nights
opens this Friday, May 9

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