To start with, this film somehow manage to made you find your own stories amongst the jumping scenes, simple everyday dialogues and the different plots of this movie on soul searching and lost love. It's a typical romantic film about feelings, broken hearts and hopes (or hopelessness for that matter) with some insertion of betrayal, suicide and gambling.

Norah Jones as a starring role with Jude Law didn't particularly interest me until I saw who directed the movie. It's another one of Wong Kar Wai's film which I'm a big fan of after watching In The Mood For Love starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. The cinematography is the usual hip and artistic style of Wong Kar Wai's movie with blurred motions of lights, jumping scenes and focus shots of the artists or chosen objects that appeared repeatedly as a iconic part of the whole movie. Combined with a backdrop of soundtracks ranging from Norah Jones' own song to Otis Redding and a borrowed melody by Gustavo Santaolalla from The Motorcyle Diary, the director succeeded to maintain the artistic hip urban feelings throughout the different settings from the opening scenes of a New York So Ho cafe to a bar in Memphis, Tennessee and gambling place in Las Vegas.

This combination of cinematography and romantic screenplay by Lawrence Block produced a charming and simple philosophical story tied together mostly by Jude Law as the So Ho cafe owner and Norah Jones over discussions of a jar full of key chains left by broken hearted or betrayed couples while eating blueberry pie. "Sometimes, even if you have the keys those doors still can't be opened. Can they?" is one of the quotes in this movie that basically summed up the whole process of soul searching done by Norah Jones who took a bus from New York to Memphis and Las Vegas.

The supporting artists like Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman and David Strathairn provide the complete knots in the different plots with their strong acting that has made this movie worthwhile to see.

"It took me nearly a year to get here. It wasn't so hard to cross that street after all, it all depends on who's waiting for you on the other side." is an ending line that signifies the soul searching is over. Like I said, you could find your own stories in this movie. If you dare to look. I did, and it was enough to made me smile.


My Blueberry Nights is a 2007 film directed by Wong Kar Wai, starring Norah Jones and Jude Law. It also features Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, David Strathairn and Cat Power. It is Wong's first feature film in English.

My Blueberry Nights was the opening film for the 2007 Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2007.

Chinese noodle place in a narrow alley walkway. Rainy days. It's Hong Kong in the 60's filled with retro feeling represented by big Siemens wall clock, Japanese rice cooker, vaselined slick hair and a body hugging sensual Cheongsam/Qipao dress. To borrow a phrase from one of the film reviews this movie is a "Literary Vision" which to my interpretation is like a composition of beautiful sentences and old photographs combined together forming that distinctive Won Kar-Wai's hip and artistic style of movie making. His composition of the retro icons mixed with Nat King Cole's Spanish songs and even "Bengawan Solo" song as the backdrop has succesfully transfered us back to the dream and nostalgic time.

The story is about a married man Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and a married woman Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) who moved to an apartments next to each other on the same day. This mellow -drama between the two developed when they both discovered that their respective spouses (which were hinted mostly off-screen as these characters were never really shown in the film) were involved in a torrid affair with each other. Leung and Cheung then fell in love to each other and formed a relationship of restrained love bounded by ethics and moral principles. Their uncertain affair has an air of sadness and consolation over the betrayal they felt from their spouses mixed with a lot of ambiguities about the extend of their plutonic relationship whether it was about the sharing of feelings, love, and sexual desires. Did they eventually slept together?. These are the abstractions of the plot which Wong Kar-Wai has build with a romantic athmosphere and characterization illustrated through a mind -massage narrative, settings, wardrobe and color.

It is a movie of "dream time" and melodrama of mood. The acting of Tony Leung and the sensual Maggie Cheung in her Cheongsam provide a portrayal of restraint love from the fight between emotional desires and moral principles and society's norms. These mood of loves between them were shown like a painted canvas of wet alley street, steak dinner, a seedy hotel room, duck noodles vendor in Singapore, and an anti-climax ending in Angkor Wat ruin in Cambodia.

Filmography:
In The Mood of Love (Hua Yang Nian Hua). Written and directed by Wong Kar-Wai. Starring Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung. Block 2 Pictures, Inc (2000). Cannes 2000 Award.