Nobody films beau­ti­ful women, or should I say, nobody films women beau­ti­fully, like Wong Kar Wai. In Blue­berry Nights, he has no less than four famous female faces to wor­ship with his camera:

• Norah Jones — Per­haps not the most nat­ural of actors, but her speak­ing voice is as emo­tion­ally expres­sive as it is in her famously lan­guid, evoca­tive music.
• Chan Mar­shall (aka Cat Power) — Like Jones, Mar­shall is a musi­cian and not an expe­ri­enced actor, but her cameo is bit­ter­sweet and effective.
• Rachel Weisz — The New York Times one described Weisz as “the think­ing man’s sex sym­bol,” but here she por­trays a seem­ingly thick char­ac­ter with a cruel streak.
• Natalie Port­man — Like Weisz, Port­man plays against type as a trou­bled young gam­bling addict with an Elec­tra complex.

Didn’t Jude Law’s mother ever teach him it’s rude to reach across the table?

Wong Kar Wai’s first English-language film My Blue­berry Nights is mostly set in bars and din­ers across Amer­ica. His char­ac­ters all indulge in the four great Amer­i­can pas­times: eat­ing, drink­ing, gam­bling, and dri­ving. It’s impos­si­ble to miss the cen­tral metaphor: every morn­ing, diner pro­pri­etor Jeremy (Jude Law) rit­u­ally bakes a blue­berry pie. Never eaten, it is thrown out whole every night. It may be unde­sired for the time being, but every day there is a fresh chance for it to find some­one who hungers for it.

Natalie Port­man offers Norah Jones an offer she can’t refuse

Offi­cial movie site: www.myblueberrynightsmovie.co.uk

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

[UPDATED AUGUST 29, 2008 to cor­rect typo in rating]

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