The 60th Cannes Film Festival opened last night with My Blueberry Nights, from legendary Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai (In The Mood For Love 2046 ). I didn’t arrive in time for the main screening yesterday but managed to catch up with it today, and I can report that it has all of the visual flair but little of the soul of Wong’s previous films. US singer Nora Jones plays Elizabeth, who storms into a New York diner one night and asks the proprietor (Jude Law) to return some keys to one of his regular customers who lives across the street. She won’t be needing them any more. Some suitably oblique flirting and the eating of blueberry pies ensues, before Elizabeth hits the road on a year-long journey that she hopes will heal her broken heart.
First stop is Memphis, where she encounters alcoholic cop David Strathairn and the woman from whom he has yet to accept he’s separated, Rachel Weisz. Jude Law adopts a Mancunian accent for his character, raising the stakes for Weisz who goes off the deep end with an unconvincing Tennessee twang. Fellow critics have spoken admiringly of Strathairn’s performance, but I found this the weakest segment overall.
The film lifts in Nevada with the arrival of Leslie, a compulsive gambler played by Natalie Portman. Nice-girl Natalie, all va-va-voom clingy outfits, glam make-up and cropped bleached hair, is cast against type as the Jaguar-driving poker fiend, but she pulls it off, and gives the movie an injection of fun energy.
Ultimately, though, the story is flimsy and the emotions pretty banal, although the stylised cinematography by Darius Khondji (Delicatessen, Seven, The Beach) is up to the standards of Christopher Doyle, who shot Wong classics such as Happy Together and In the Mood For Love. The Ry Cooder soundtrack meshes well with haunting songs by Cat Power and soul favourites such as Try A Little Tenderness.
