Reviewer's Rating 3 out of 5
My Blueberry Nights (2008)
12aContains two uses of strong language

Wong Kar-Wai fans will be divided over the merits of My Blueberry Nights, an episodic, rambling and only fitfully successful attempt to transfer the stylised atmospherics and dream-like languor of and to an American setting. Norah Jones is Elizabeth, a newly dumped waitress whose impulsive road trip across the US brings her into contact with other lost souls with their own romantic problems. Like Jude Law's Mancunian accent, however, the low-key result never quite rings true.

Law plays Jeremy, a British cafe owner in New York who consoles Jones's lovelorn waif with kind words and free desserts. His reward is to receive postcards from her cross-country odyssey, which sees her encounter an alcoholic Memphis cop (David Strathairn), his cheating wife (Rachel Weisz, vampily introduced in almost parodic slow-motion) and, later, a Nevada gambler (Natalie Portman) who dupes her out of her travel money. Passive to the point of inertia, Elizabeth has little impact on the people she meets or their tragic lives. But the heartbreak she witnesses at least puts her own into perspective, something Jones conveys with an unforced naturalism that helps offset her acting inexperience.

"FRUSTRATINGLY INSUBSTANTIAL"

"Sometimes the tangible distance between two persons can be quite small but the emotional one can be miles," Kar-Wai explains in a director's statement. "My Blueberry Nights is a look at those distances, from various angles." For all its delicious moments, though, you can't help feeling there are a couple of ingredients missing from this frustratingly insubstantial confection.

My Blueberry Nights is out in the UK on 22nd February 2008.

End Credits

Director: Wong Kar-Wai

Writer: Wong Kar-Wai, Lawrence Block

Stars: Norah Jones, Jude Law, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman

Genre: Drama, Romance

Length: 95 minutes

Cinema: 22 February 2008

Country: France/Hong Kong

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