Considering how often The Mamas & The Papas’ California Dreamin’ played in Chungking Express (1994), the first Wong Kar Wai film to receive a theatrical run in the USA, you’d think that when the internationally acclaimed auteur finally made his first feature-length film in that country, it would take place in the Golden State. Instead, the dreamy My Blueberry Nights, the opening film at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and Wong’s first feature-length English language movie, is set pretty much everywhere else – specifically in not very glamorous sections of New York City, Memphis, Tennessee, and Ely along with Las Vegas, Nevada.

Singing star Norah Jones, making her movie debut, takes centre stage playing a young woman called Elizabeth, who leaves New York City after being dumped by her boyfriend and – perhaps unknowingly – leads another man on the path to love. Even though they don’t really know each other, Elizabeth, venturing further and further west on a journey to mend her broken heart, takes to regularly writing Jeremy (Jude Law), the marathon enthusiast from Manchester, England, who now runs a cafe in New York that serves, among other culinary delights, blueberry pie.

While he fruitlessly tries to trace her whereabouts and share at least one phone call, she makes a new life for herself and, along the way, learns more about herself, often through meetings and conversations with disparate strangers; the three most notable of whom are a lovelorn Memphis policeman named Arnie (David Strathairn), his frustrated estranged wife Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz) and a sassy young Nevadan gambler called Leslie (Natalie Portman) who attempts, but fails, to teach Elizabeth to be less trusting of people. But all the while, despite her stating that she didn’t want to be the person she had been in New York anymore, Elizabeth doesn’t ever seem to be able to completely let go of all that she had left behind there...

When it played at Cannes last year, My Blueberry Nights reportedly clocked in at 111 minutes. Somewhat unusually for a latter-day Wong Kar Wai offering, it also didn’t get the best of critical receptions and rumours abounded for some time that this star-studded film with one Oscar winner and three Academy Award nominees in its cast would be re-edited before its wider international release. What with the version I viewed having a total running time of approximately 95 minutes, that indeed looks to be what has happened. And, I’ll venture, it appears to have become quite a bit better for it even while still retaining the now signature unhurried pace of a Wong Kar Wai movie.

Thanks no doubt to his long-time collaborator, William Chang Suk Ping, being the production and costume designer as well as editor, My Blueberry Nights is still very recognizably a Wong Kar Wai film. For while it’s true enough that not a single Chinese face can be found among this film’s cast, there are oh so many visual elements in it – including close-ups of clocks and the favouring of plaid for a shirt pattern by at least one significant male character – that will cause those familiar with Wong and Chang’s oeuvre to make emotional connections between this their latest movie and many of the older ones.

Additionally, even while Ry Cooder gets composing credits, it’s easy to assume that this film’s director, producer cum co-scriptwriter had some say with regards to its music; especially since the tune that plays as the end credits roll bears a direct association with that which plays through much of Wong’s infinitely more claustrophobic In the Mood for Love (2000).

Finally, and I realize I may be reading too much into things here – as many fans have been accused of doing with regards to Wong’s works – it seems that there’s a little tribute to the late Leslie Cheung – whose filmographic highlights include starring roles in the master filmmaker’s Days of Being Wild (1990), Ashes of Time (1994) and Happy Together (1997) – in the movie. If so, here’s stating for the record that it makes for one more element in this lovely film that I am most grateful to him for including.

Yvonne Teh