My Blueberry Nights

My Blueberry Nights
Original poster
Directed by	Wong Kar Wai
Written by	Kar Wai Wong Lawrence Block
Produced by	Stéphane Kooshmanian Jean-Louis Piel Jacky Pang Yee Wah Wang Wei Kar Wai Wong
Starring	Norah Jones Jude Law David Strathairn Rachel Weisz Natalie Portman
Cinematography	Darius Khondji
Edited by	William Chang
Music by	Ry Cooder
Distributed by	The Weinstein Company
Release dates	November 16, 2007 (Canada) April 4, 2008 (US)
Running time	111 minutes
Countries	Hong Kong China France
Language	English
Box office	$21,967,587 (Worldwide)

My Blueberry Nights is a 2007 drama film directed by Wong Kar Wai, his first feature in English. The screenplay by Wong and Lawrence Block is based on a short Chinese language film written and directed by Wong.

Plot

Jeremy is an émigré from Manchester who owns a small New York City cafe that becomes a haven for Elizabeth as she tries to recover emotionally following the end of an affair. She finds comfort in the blueberry pie he bakes daily despite the fact none of his customers ever order it.

Elizabeth, now calling herself Lizzie, eventually drifts to Memphis, Tennessee, where she takes two jobs, waitress by day and barmaid by night, in order to earn enough money to finance the purchase of a car. She regularly sends postcards to Jeremy without revealing where she lives or works and, although he tries to locate her by calling all the restaurants in the area, he fails to find her. He later on decides to send out postcards to any restaurants she may be to find her.

One of Lizzie's regulars at both jobs is local policeman Arnie Copeland, an alcoholic who cannot accept the fact his wife Sue Lynne has left him and is flaunting her freedom by openly socializing with other men. He confesses to Lizzie his many attempts at achieving sobriety have ended in failure. One night he drunkenly threatens his estranged wife with his gun, if she leaves, then crashes his car and is killed. Lizzie comforts Sue Lynne, who gives her the money towards Arnie's tab at the bar Lizzie works at in the evening, before leaving town.

Heading west, Elizabeth - now calling herself Beth - gets another waitress job at a casino in a small town in Nevada. Here she meets Leslie, an inveterate poker player who has lost all her money. Beth agrees to lend her $2200 in exchange for a third of her winnings or her car if she loses. When she does lose, she fulfills her promise by giving Beth the car, but asks her to drive her to Las Vegas so she can borrow money from her father, whom she has not seen in a long time. While en route she receives a call from a Vegas hospital, where her father has been admitted and is dying. Leslie believes the call is simply a ruse to lure her home, but upon arrival in Vegas she discovers her father died the previous night. Leslie announces she wants to keep the car, which she had stolen from her father, who had sent her the title and registration despite their estrangement. She confesses she really won the card game and gives Beth her promised share of the winnings, which she uses to finally purchase the car she always wanted.

Elizabeth returns to Manhattan and, discovering her ex-boyfriend has vacated his apartment and moved on with his life, returns to the cafe, where Jeremy has had a stool at the counter reserved for her ever since she left. As she eats a slice of blueberry pie, Elizabeth realizes her feelings for him are reciprocated.

Production

In Making My Blueberry Nights, a bonus on the DVD release of the film, screenwriter/ director Wong Kar Wai reveals his first choice for Elizabeth was singer Norah Jones despite her lack of prior acting experience. He originally intended to shoot the film in sequence, but when he discovered Rachel Weisz, who he wanted to cast as Sue Lynne, was pregnant, he agreed to film the Memphis scenes last to allow her time to give birth and recuperate before beginning work.

The film was shot on location at the Palacinka Cafe in SoHo in New York City, the South Main Arts District in Memphis, and Caliente, Ely, and Las Vegas in Nevada.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2007 and was shown at the Hamburg Film Festival, the Valladolid International Film Festival, and the Munich Asia Filmfest before going into limited theatrical release in Canada on November 16. It opened throughout Europe and Asia before opening on six screens in the US on April 4, 2008. It earned $74,146 on its opening weekend. It eventually grossed $867,275 in the US and $21,100,312 in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $21,967,587.

Cast list

• Norah Jones ..... Elizabeth/Lizzie/Beth
• Jude Law ..... Jeremy
• David Strathairn ..... Arnie Copeland
• Rachel Weisz ..... Sue Lynne Copeland
• Natalie Portman ..... Leslie

Critical reception

A.O. Scott of the New York Times called the settings "wildly unrealistic" and added, "The smoky Tennessee juke joint and the cute little Manhattan bakery-cafe look like theme restaurants catering to the tourist trade, and even the highways snaking through the mountains and deserts have the inauthentic glow of rental-car advertisements. Mr. Wong and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, make America look so pretty that you may have trouble recognizing it." He continued, "For this director a sense of place is useful only insofar as it conjures a state of feeling, and geographical coordinates are, above all, indices of atmosphere and mood . . . I am more inclined to think that in his recent work Mr. Wong caters to a persistent appetite for luxury, for an unabashed, free-floating glamour that can be hard to find in movies these days and that cinephiles sometimes feel guilty about craving. To claim his fashion magazine sensibility for the cause of high art is a way of ascribing nutritive value to eye candy. And why not? We all need to eat, and why shouldn’t we eat cake? . . . After 90 minutes of My Blueberry Nights, which pass pleasantly enough, with swirly, mood-saturated colors; lovely faces; and nice music, you may feel a bit logy yourself — filled up, sugar-addled, but not really satisfied."

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle observed, "The movie's overall story is modest, and if it were any longer the film might start to drag. But at 90 minutes, it's short enough to be carried along on the drama of its individual scenes and the strength of its performances . . . The nice thing about Wong is that, like a good gambler, he knows when to bet the farm and when to hold back. Most of the time, he plays it straight, and other times he will speed up the action into a kind of blur, to indicate time passing; or he'll fade out and back into the same shot, as though to indicate renewed focus. Everything he does re-creates a state of mind. It's such a relief to realize he's doing everything for a reason and not to show off."

Meghan Keane of the New York Sun said the film "keenly displays Wong Kar Wai's aptitude for relationship drama and showcasing the female form, but the Chinese director's American debut often makes the earnest miscalculation of a dubbed foreign film . . . [I]n translating his fascination with the distances between two people into American vernacular, Mr. Wong betrays an unfamiliarity with his subject matter that often undermines his story . . . Sadly, [his] interpretation of American lives and landscapes has an alien quality to it. He fetishizes the American countryside, drowns his characters' sorrows in whiskey, and makes plot-oriented decisions based on aesthetics rather than continuity or logic. The image of beautiful women in oversize sunglasses leaning against convertibles is not an accurate depiction of Americana — but it doesn't make for a bad visual."

Todd McCarthy of Variety called the film "as much a trifle as its title suggests" and added, "[I]ts ambition and accomplishment remain modest in the extreme . . . Blueberry echoes the director's biggest hit, In the Mood for Love, in its moody melancholy, claustrophic settings and highly decorative shooting style. But while the actors' dialogue delivery is perfectly natural, the aphoristic philosophical nuggets Wong favors sound banal and clunky in this context, leaving the film thematically in the shallow end of the pool. Additionally, the road movie potential of the film's second half feel significantly under-realized . . . For all its insubstantiality, My Blueberry Nights does provide some catnip allure that will be to some tastes . . . Jones proves agreeable but bland company in the role [of Elizabeth]; she's attractive, but lacks mystery, emotional vitality and that something special behind the eyes. As if to make up for this in their scenes together, Law starts off in overdrive and only rarely downshifts; he's more effective when he does so."

Awards and nominations

Wong Kar Wai was nominated for the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and for Best Foreign Film at the Cinema Writers Circle Awards in Spain.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack, released on the Blue Note Records label, features tracks by Norah Jones, Cat Power, Ry Cooder, Oscar-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla, Otis Redding, Cassandra Wilson, and Amos Lee.

• The Story – Norah Jones
• Living Proof - Cat Power
• Ely Nevada – Ry Cooder
• Try a Little Tenderness – Otis Redding
• Looking Back – Ruth Brown
• Long Ride – Ry Cooder
• Eyes on the Prize – Mavis Staples
• Yumeji's Theme - Chikara Tsuzuki
• Skipping Stone - Amos Lee
• Bus Ride – Ry Cooder
• Harvest Moon - Cassandra Wilson
• Devil’s Highway – Hello Stranger
• Pajaros – Gustavo Santaolalla
• The Greatest – Cat Power

External links

• Official website
• US website
• My Blueberry Nights at IMDb
• My Blueberry Nights at AllMovie
• My Blueberry Nights at Metacritic
• My Blueberry Nights at Rotten Tomatoes
• My Blueberry Nights at the TCM Movie Database