My Blueberry Nights (2007)
August 6th, 2008
This is a romantic anthology film by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai. Loosely a road movie, it has three parts:
1. The framing story. Elizabeth, a young woman played by jazz singer Norah Jones in her first acting role, visits lonely pub owner Jeremy (Jude Law) late at night for solace and blueberry pie. The closeups of pie eating are close to pornographic. He falls in love, but she hits the road.
2. Elizabeth goes to Memphis and gets a job as a waitress. This part is all deep reds and blues, jazz music, revenge, sex, violence, and alcohol. The ubiquitous David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck) plays an alcoholic cop who almost kills his vampy ex-wife, played by Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener). Elizabeth sends postcards to Jeremy.
3. Elizabeth hits the road for Nevada, where she runs into Leslie, a gambler and con woman played by Natalie Portman (Closer). Elizabeth sends postcards to Jeremy. This part lacks the lush colours and lurid action of the second part. It’s set in the desert, where beige seems to be the only colour. I liked it better in Memphis.
4. The other half of the framing story. Elizabeth leaves the road and goes back to the diner, where she eats pie with Jeremy. Ice cream melts suggestively into flaky pastry. Everything is going to be all right.
My verdict: I like the framing story, I LOVE the Memphis part, but I’m lukewarm about the Nevada part.
There is a lot of good acting here, especially from Strathairn and Weisz. Portman is fine, although I’m starting to find her a bit shrill. She was interesting as a child star, progressing from the Star Wars universe where she played Queen Amidala into adult roles in movies like Closer and V. Maybe for me, she’s reaching the limits of how far she can really go.
But Norah Jones, although she looks good, is lost in such a big role. It’s not that she’s awful. It’s just that she shrinks in comparison with the big talents of Strathairn, Weisz, Law, and Portman. Her performance only works as well as it does because her part, although it is big and has a lot of screen time, is essentially that of an observer. She drifts through other people’s stories and is really only active in the framing story.
One wonders if Jones will act again. Some of the reviews were a lot less kind to her than this one. It would have been better for her if she had been eased into the profession, not catapulted into a starring role her first time out.
I like this movie quite a bit, but with reservations. The part that’s good, the Memphis part, is really good — superheated, pressure-cooked, soaked in music and colour. The rest is ok. And it can be painful to watch the inexperienced Jones.
One thumb up, but well worth seeing for the goings-on in Memphis.
