Sunday, April 20, 2008
A+E, Movies, Reviews
Empty calories
Chinese director’s star-studded latest gets lost in translation
CREDIT: ©The Weinstein Company, 2007/MaCall Polay
Norah Jones and Natalie Portman in Wong Kar Wai’s “My Blueberry Nights.”
“MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS”
Norah Jones, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, David Strathairn
Directed by Wong Kar Wai
Rated PG-13
Regal Tara 4 Cinema, Regal Hollywood 24
BY STEVE MURRAY
Chinese director Wong Kar Wai (“In the Mood for Love”) transplants his standby theme of romantic longing and his shimmery, neon-drenched nighttime palette to the U.S. for “My Blueberry Nights.” But things get lost in translation. Maybe there’s something to be said for subtitles, which can make the dumbest dialogue sound profound.
Singer-songwriter Norah Jones plays Elizabeth, a New Yorker trying to get over heartache after her boyfriend dumps her. She confides her sorrows to café owner Jeremy (Jude Law), who offers her fortune-cookie snippets of wisdom and slices of pie a la mode—and gently kisses the ice cream off her lips when she falls asleep on his countertop. (It’s more an “ew” than an “aw” moment.)
Elizabeth then hits the road, bartending in Memphis, where she meets sad-sack alcoholic cop David Strathairn and his slutty, estranged wife, played by Rachel Weisz. Next, she heads to Las Vegas, where she encounters card sharp Natalie Portman. And then, yeah, she returns to New York.
There’s not much here in the way of plot. The folks Elizabeth meets are quirky in self-conscious ways familiar from indie movies. None of the actors are bad; they just don’t have anything real to work with. And despite its road-trip structure, the movie never really summons a memorable sense of place in its various locales.
Wong trots out his signature tricks: slo-mo sequences, nighttime scenes pierced by gemstone lighting, and a pop song played repeatedly as a motif (this time it’s Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness”). But these devices aren’t attached to anything that feels as emotionally fraught or obsessive as “In the Mood for Love” or its out-there sci-fi sequel, “2046.” Nor does the movie have the gung-ho giddiness of, say, his “Chungking Express.” “My Blueberry Nights” sometimes plays like the work of a Wong admirer, who replicates the skin but not the soul of the director’s films.
Still, “Blueberry” is a whimsical misfire, not a disaster. Jones, in her first acting role, is easy on the eye, but lacks the sort of charisma that could give the film the focus and energy it needs.
If she’s too naturalistic and recessive, Law is as artificial as Wong’s carefully composed shots. The once-shrewd, precise actor has turned, in just a few years, into a narcissistic phony. His Jeremy is exactly the sort of guy you hope Elizabeth won’t end up with. As the sad, drunken cop, Strathairn is good—but when isn’t he? Portman finds prickly charm in her role as a borderline sociopath. And Weisz manages to sell a mournful monologue about her marriage which, in the mouth of a less persuasive actress, would be ridiculous.
Fans of Wong’s other movies will want to check this out. But for everyone else, “Blueberry” is just a big slice of empty calories. 1.5 STARS