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Elizabeth’s heart is broken. For solace, she drops in late at night a few times at Jeremy’s diner for blueberry pie a la mode; they talk. Once, he watchers her sleep, her head on the counter. Abruptly, she leaves New York City to get away from her pain. She works a couple of jobs in Memphis. There, a heart-broken cop is drinking himself into oblivion, his ex occasionally showing up where he drinks and Lizzy works. Then, she’s in Nevada, working at a casino where she uses her savings (she wants a car) to stake Leslie, a busted gambler, in a high rollers’ game. After, Beth drives Leslie to Vegas where Leslie’s estranged father lives. Broken relationships. What about Jeremy?

I’m a sucker for a love story. Just in case you don’t know. Not lovey dovey love stories but realistic ones that test the bounds of love. Which brings me to this film.

This film is definitely not for everyone. It epitomizes the idea of what the general public thinks of a independent movie talky, artsy, colorful but it is so much more my friends. So much more. If I could be so bold I would call this a noble failure.
Norah Jones isn’t perfect but she tries. It’s like watching someone at their first acting classes trying to do a scene. Not great but at least passable in her performance.

Wong Kar Wai could capture beauty in anything especially a cultural landscape. He could make the Ozark terrain somehow appealing and magical. His love of vivid colors and ethereal camera angles. So it would only be natural that he would pick New York as his first American landscape to film in and explore, of course being a true tourist to this country he makes this a road movie. So as the movie travels he brings out the natural beauty of every place the film goes. He hasn’t lost his trademark of using small intimate locations to let you really get to know the characters more then the plot. From the outside his movies seem to be more style over substance, but once you really get into the film you realize he is using style to not only get to the emotions but to accentuate the substance. His films are usually about mood, emotions and style, but it is more about what isn’t said then what is.

This film is about small intimate stories spaced out across different states so that the film takes us on a parallel journey for the filmmaker also as he is working in his non native land and getting to work in a new playground to film. He puts himself in the place of the audience. As he seems to be discovering the locations as we do. Opening our eyes to the natural beauty of them, but also presenting them with a sense of wonder.

This movie is like watching a bunch of one act plays combined with a single common character linking them all.

The first story is more like a Tennesse Williams play. Acted out in New Orleans. The stories vary from location.

If you are used to the wong kar wai style you’ll love this. How he layers the stories. It is like reading a book the more the story goes along. The more invested you get and begin to really care about the characters and their fate. This film again has the main theme of love and heartbreak and the sadness both can sometimes bring.

The film affected me on a emotional level.

Norah jones is not the only singer making an acting debut in the film so does the singer Cat Power. Natalie Portman once again proves she can rarely do no wrong as a actress. Shecanmorph into any character and still be believable which is interesting as she steals all the scenes she is in. The lead role that Norah plays seems more like the type of role Natalie would play, but I enjoy seeing Natalie Portman take more chances with her loud character.

This film for me is a buy but wait for it to be previously used

GRADE: B

I love My Blueberry Nights and reviewed it for my blog here

It’s classic Wong, circa Chungking Express, Fallen Angels and 2046: the short story format for tales about impossible relationships, unrequited loves, damaged loves, broken romances, and wounded hearts traveling to distract from the hurt. This is a kind of storytelling I love, about moments captured in time, about the sensuality of image, about the overwhelming emotional assault of loving and living. Norah Jones is no Faye Wong, but she has a face just as lush and open and Wong loves to look her and redirect our perspective through her wide eyes.

I really enjoyed this story. Norah Jones not only creates amazing music but she can also act. Jude Law did a good job along with the ever wonderful Natalie Portman who was in top form. I also loved the performance from Rachel Weisz. This is the first time I’ve experienced a Kar-Wai film and while I liked quite a lot of the visuals and there was a lot of great lighting, I found that he has an absurd amount of shots with objects/walls either partially in frame or even physically in the way of the characters. It became hugely annoying very quickly and there didn’t seem to be any reason for it other than supposed “style”. Fortunately this was mainly only in the early scenes of the film. But that along with a lack of more zoomed out shots was a huge annoyance to me. Fortunately that problem, like I said, mainly only occurred in the eariler scenes. Overall I enjoyed this very much.

(Wednesday, May 20, 2009 6:23pm)

A movie that shows more images than dialouge in an artistic direction by Wong Kar-Wai. The film’s visionary images captures the audience’s attention in a slow, chill, and melodramatic way. Wong Kar-Wai uses musicians more often than real life actors for his pictures because he believe they obtain unique talents. My Blueberry Nights’ emotional feelings not only capture character’s sacrifices, but also love and second chances as well. I very well recommend this movie to anyone who loves music. Well, who doesn’t? It’s in my collection. A tasty movie! 8/10.

I really need to start watching more films by Kar Wai Wong. I adore In the Mood for Love, yet I still have not found the time to view its sequel 2046. Instead, I chose to take a gander at his English-language debut, My Blueberry Nights. This is a fantastic film; I don’t care what people say. It is a road trip journey through the landscape of the soul, overcoming that which did not work in life in order to accept that which does. One may think that the film is about the lead, played by singer Norah Jones, but they will be mistaken, sort of. Yes, she is the central character and it is her that is on the journey, however, the people she touches along the way have their own inner catharsis as well. Whether that view into their heart ends with joy, tragedy, hope, or forgiveness, well that is for them to experience and decide. Not every story has a happy ending, but at least finding one more smile, one person’s soul to look into and see that the world isn’t completely insane, can end it bittersweet—sometimes we need that reassurance before we can settle our bets and walk away from the table.

For an acting debut, I have to give credit to Jones. She has some heavyweights to play against, and all of them more or less bring their A-game, yet she is able to hold her own. More of a natural performance than trying to do anything flashy, Jones is the perfect vessel for us to walk around and meet the many characters she comes across. It is as much about their stories as hers, but she is most definitely the catalyst for everything. After all, the tale begins when she discovers her boyfriend has been cheating on her. Spilling her thoughts and emotions with the diner’s owner, (the place her ex had his indiscretion exposed), she finds that only by getting away will she be able to put her life back together. The bond between these two lost souls, however, has been forged and wherever the road takes her, she stays in touch with postcards written to the one person she believes can hear her voice.

Jones’ role of Lizzie is the cause of much that happens to those around her. Touching the dinerman, played brilliantly by Jude Law, (thank God they allowed him to play a Brit, because his bad American accent would have totally ruined the part, much like Rachel Weisz’s fake southern one almost did), on a spiritual level, in a way that will play a major part in his future confrontation with the one that got away, his set of keys laid in the jar above his bar for too many years; giving a depressed drunk a reason to believe that the world isn’t all bad, one shining beacon of light to bring him out of the funk he has been in since the woman he loved found she could no longer be with him, (David Strathairn truly steals the entire film with his performance, absolutely fantastic); and having the trust to lend some cash to a girl in her element of high stakes Texas Hold’Em, while also teaching her that there was more to life than just reading people and knowing their next move…it’s just too bad she did not learn it sooner, especially after the person who taught her to be a cynic had given her the gift of love through a FedEx package, (Natalie Portman, in a role that you would not expect from her, very good, very funny, and most of all very real). Each person learned more about themselves just by using Jones’ Lizzie as a mirror into their own psyche. They may not all finish for the better, but they still end with dignity and maybe a sliver of happiness that wasn’t there before she crossed their path.

While Norah Jones is a big part of the success, in her ability to let others craft their roles off of her, one can’t end without speaking about the director. Kar Wai is a master of visuals and even his use of the gimmick of looking through things constantly never grows old. Almost three-quarters of the movie are seen through windows, bakery shelf casings, bottles on a bar, security cameras, etc. Even his use of light is phenomenal—going from the dark exteriors and natural light of Law’s diner; to the bright sunlight of the Memphis diner; to the dim phosphorescence of the bar at night; all the way to the hazy, neon highlights of Vegas—every frame is gorgeous. Even the use of slow-motion at high emotive moments and close-ups of shoes or pie meeting melted ice cream don’t detract from the big picture. Never afraid of askew compositions either, we are shown some nice positioning of the camera and cropping of the picture. It’s all done with the greatest amount of care, subtly and effectively, enhancing the words and actions of those actors doing their job. With a payoff that is expected from the first moment of the film, it is still so perfect of a conclusion to her trek through America and her soul that you can’t help but smile once the credits begin to roll.

As I watched the melted ice cream ooze between two blueberries baked in a pie, under lighting that reminded me of the intro to 3-2-1 Contact, I realized something: Wong Kar-Wai, who is the auteur of my all-time favorite film, ‘’Chungking Express’’, should stick to confined spaces. His stories fit better in hallways, stairwells, alleys, and between towers of corrugated cardboard than they do in the 3900 miles or more across a Brooklyn avenue.

The romance is there, unrequited and otherwise. The brooding eateries are there, even if they lack their cousins, the brooding bedrooms. The neon is there, and the obscured shots are there – don’t get me wrong, this still has a lot of the Wong Kar-Wai we all love. But then the camera pans around the obstruction to reveal Nora Jones and it’s hard to tell if she’s lonely, sleeping or if she’s just full on pie. Her character laments the fact she can’t play poker, which is strange for a girl who has shown one face, and one face only, for an entire movie. But that’s not the character’s fault, it’s the fault of an actress seemingly incapable of expressing an emotion of any kind in front of a camera. And that, I think, is the real problem with this film. Not so much Wong Kar-Wai and his new-found space with which to fill a movie, but that he used a cast that just wasn’t able to fill it. Jude Law and Natalie Portman are accomplished enough actors that you might expect well from them, but their usual performances are like the Wong Kar-Wai characters that you never see, who are only available over the phone, and who just get pined for.

I did love the ending, though. I’ve often heard a great ending has to be both unexpected and at the same time so obviously the only thing that could have happened. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say this movie ends this way, doubly so if you are familiar with Wong Kar-Wai’s body of work.