Posted on Fri, Apr. 25, 2008

The good news about My Blueberry Nights, the first English-language movie by director Wong Kar Wai (Chunking Express, In the Mood for Love), is that it delivers the profound visual pleasures that have become part of the filmmaker's signature (the cinematography is by Darius Khondji, who makes a fleeting shot of blueberry pie and melting vanilla ice cream look better than the real thing).

The bad news about My Blueberry Nights is that it feels like an exaggeration to call it an actual movie. This wafer-thin bauble, which was edited down by 20 minutes since its unfavorable reception at the Cannes Film Festival last May, would have made a better short film than a feature, since its appeal is all surface. It's beautiful to look at, but there's little there to savor.

Singer Norah Jones stars as Elizabeth, a young woman in a relationship nearing its end who befriends the owner (Jude Law) of a New York City diner just before heading out on a road trip to nurse her broken heart. Her travels take her to Memphis and later Nevada, but her adventures on the road feel like a way for the film to pad out its running time -- and for Wong to ladle on the period songs and impeccably lit images -- before she returns East, where the restaurateur awaits.

Maybe it's the fact that the characters are speaking English, or it may be that Jones' acting skills do not match her singing, but My Blueberry Nights often feels like a slow and moody wallow in atmospherics, with nothing to justify them except Wong's own brand of cinematic cool. Sometimes, as with his previous film, 2046, that can be enough. But this time, the enterprise is undernourishing.

Cast: Norah Jones, Jude Law, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman

Director: Wong Kar Wai

Screenwriters: Wong Kar Wai, Lawrence Block

Producers: Wong Kar Wai, Jacky Pang, Yee Wah

A Miramax Films release. Running time: 90 minutes. Vulgar language, brief violence, adult themes. In Miami-Dade only: Regal South Beach.