Wandering all over ‘Nights’

The road to romantic recovery is meandering, far-flung and thousands of miles long in “My Blueberry Nights,” Wong Kar Wai’s first English-language film. Norah Jones, in her bland screen debut, plays a brokenhearted New Yorker named Elizabeth who sets out on a road trip across America after a bad breakup, presumably in search of oblivion or at the very least a change of scenery. But first, she wallows, spending a series of long, woozy nights in an otherwise ever-deserted diner basking in the melancholy sympathy of diner owner and fellow lonely-heart, Jeremy, improbably played by Jude Law. If this is the guy she goes to for a shoulder, you have to wonder who she’s pining for.

If Law is hard to buy as the counter-wiping type, he’s even harder to buy as the type to dispense home-spun similes equating recently dumped girls to unsold pastry. Wong’s dreamy evocation of that post-heartbreak misery blur is dead-on, but Jones isn’t strong enough an actress to do much more than drift through it in a haze.

Of course, Wong’s signature lyrical gorgeousness, all bleeding lights and smudged close-ups and cool, agonizing soundtrack, (Chan Marshall of Cat Power provides many of the songs and also makes an appearance as Jeremy’s long lost love) is a dead giveaway that “My Blueberry Nights” isn’t shooting for realism, but that all this lush ambiguity feels rather awkwardly transposed to a strange New York whose clock seems to have stopped some time in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. Jeremy nurses Elizabeth through her heartache with decadent mounds of blueberry pie and universal tales of love gone wrong, and she rewards his pains by falling asleep on the counter with ice cream on her lips.

Fifty-seven days later, and for no apparent reason, she’s in Memphis, tending bar and waiting tables, and sending Jeremy, who kissed the residual dessert off her lips just days before she left, the occasional postcard with no return address or contact information. The idea, presumably, is that Elizabeth has left New York to get away from the scene of her misery and to clear her mind. But given what we’ve seen of her post-breakup life in New York that decision is hard to fathom. Wong’s best movies, in particular the sublime “In the Mood for Love,” have centered on tentative love affairs that never quite take hold. But the decision to keep the potential lovers apart throughout the movie, not to Elizabeth’s apparent obliviousness to Jeremy’s feelings (or Jones’ inability to express anything resembling inner conflict) makes the movie feel more plotless than excruciating.

Memphis, which is where “My Blueberry Nights” lost me, is, like New York, reduced to a couple of iconic locations and seemingly frozen in time, telegraphed via a honky-tonk bar, an old-school diner and the sashaying form of Rachel Weisz as Sue Lynne, a femme fatale whose estranged husband Arnie (David Strathairn), a cop, is steadily drinking himself to death on Elizabeth’s shift. Strathairn is affecting as a hopeless drunk, but Weisz’s role is thankless, and both are stuck in a cliche. Elizabeth recedes into the background as the troubles of others eclipse her own. In Nevada, she meets another damaged soul in Leslie (Natalie Portman), a compulsive gambler in a fright wig and caftan who ropes Elizabeth into a high-stakes game.

The idea is to trace Elizabeth’s emotionally journey back to life after a romantic devastation, but Elizabeth drifts without changing until she seems to disappear. The use of recognizable movie stars doesn’t help, or serve Wong’s style. “My Blueberry Nights” should have played like a memory, but its hard-living, luckless losers are too beautiful to be believed.

--

carina.chocano@latimes.com

--

“My Blueberry Nights.” Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material including violence, drinking and smoking. Running time: 90 minutes. In limited release.