Wong Kar Wai makes his English language debut with My Blueberry Nights, a dreamy, visually arresting soul searcher of little consequence. Norah Jones makes her acting debut as the heartbroken Elizabeth who sets out from New York to forget her cheating ex. Along the way she meets up with a charming Brit café owner who treats her to late night blueberry pie (Jude Law), a soul-crushed alcoholic (David Strathairn) and his dismissive hostile bride (Rachel Weisz), and a tough talking card shark (Natalie Portman). Elizabeth lends a sensitive ear to each, but their plenty depressing melancholy monologues don’t equal a complete film. Instead we’re treated to fragments of story, vignettes of each respective lost soul finding their way. Elizabeth is very nearly a sideline character. She guides us through the map of misbegotten souls but doesn’t offer much of her own distinctive reflection. Occasionally the film tries to make meaning out of small tokens, metaphoric keys and bar tabs that equal the keynote of each characters conflict. The depth never sticks, though. And it’s never really that deep to begin with.A cross between dive bar, fly on the wall no-style style and moody, image bending artistry, My Blueberry Nights often gets caught red handed flitting between its two worlds with anything but smoothness. Distracting uses of slow motion photography, extreme close ups of pie slices that read like high carb abstract art. A mood is not evoked through style but instead stifled. Just as the momentum of the peppery dialogue takes hold we’re sentenced to blunt transitions involving crisscrossing subway cars and the detached expressionistic touch of watching our heroes through a neon painted storefront window. None of this works in service of the characters. They are flights of fancy that most obviously soothe the director’s eager spirit.
Faced with the daunting task of making her debut in a leading role, Jones is likable but fairly blank. She shows potential as a film actress but would probably require a much stronger screenplay to fully realize her charms as an actress. The pack of established performers that back her up here all do their best with the thin material here as well. Weisz in particular creates a painfully truthful portrait of a small town girl struggling to overcome the stasis of a doomed marriage and uneventful life. Her journey toward breaking free of her broken past is a far more realized and satisfying departure than the sad eyed, unmotivated Elizabeth who anchors the film and yet remains agonizingly invisible.
Grade: C
