My Blueberry Nights

by Linda Winsh-Bolard


Elizabeth (Norah Jones) in New York is told that her boyfriend was seen with another woman, consequently she looks for a solace in a café that has two really nice things to offer: a blueberry pie and the sympathetic owner Jeremy (Jude Law).

Elizabeth leaves New York to travel across the country working as a waitress. During her travels she gets marginally involved with a love story gone wrong in Memphis and with a card gambler who takes her to Vegas.

It is a cross between road movie and sequel stories filmed in not quite Jarmush’s mode.

Unfortunately, regardless the tragic parts in the subplots, it manages to be flat, without any real depth because we never cross the observation point of an outsider into human interest. The main character remains observatory even as she is supposedly getting involved in other people’s lives, the supporting characters never really develop any believable personality and their stories remain largely in the clichés; we are never really touched by their stories or their personalities.

The main character, Elizabeth, or the narrator as well as the roadie, is flat as a pancake, her unmarred face remaining mostly blank, one of these young, blank screens so far removed from anybody else’s reality that if she feels any true emotions, she manages to hide them very well. But somehow it does not seem that she has any.

For those who love landscapes, particularly in the West, it’s beautifully shot, truly nice camera work, contrast staging and not bad editing. It provides visuals to carry the viewer through a picture that never really reaches either high or low.

Apart from the main character there are supporting roles. Jude Law presents the coffee shop owner who is obsessed by the girl with baby doll face. He keeps looking for her around the world, chasing her by the places from where she sends him postcards. Well, at least he is hunky and sympathetic and what else can you expect from such part?

Natalie Portman portrays Leslie, the young, spoiled gambler, whose interest in her father is rather spurious. As she twitches through her one sided character in attempts to make it more believable, she comes back to the eternally blank wall of her partner. It remains rather predictable and uninteresting.

Rachel Weisz is the beautiful wife Sue Lynne who is leaving her cop husband. Properly wampy, overtly sexy and suddenly having a breakdown, all of it in dark settings with blinking lights. It is to her credit that she makes her role to appear possible and justifiable. Or nearly so. David Strathairn is the husband, Arnie, and he is well up to burned out, angry and lonely cop with drinking problem. His character is also the most human in the film.

It does not add to the film's credo that it seems not to have any point. Looking all these people over at the end the question remains: what have they learned, if anything, and where did they take it? Anywhere?
Well, perhaps the director has learned something.



A Weinstein Company release (in U.S.) of a Block 2 Pictures/Jet Tone Films/StudioCanal presentation. (International sales: StudioCanal, Paris). Produced by Jacky Pang Yee Wah. Executive producer, Chan Ye Cheng. Directed by Wong Kar Wai. Screenplay, Wong, Lawrence Block; story, Wong.

Elizabeth - Norah Jones
Jeremy - Jude Law
Arnie - David Strathairn
Sue Lynne - Rachel Weisz
Leslie - Natalie Portman
Katya - Chan Marshall