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MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS, by Wong Kar Wai

WONG KAR WAI FULFILLS HIS AMERICAN DREAM

Wong Kar Wai is still Cannes protégé. After presiding the jury of the festival, the most celebrated and beloved filmmaker from Hong Kong has had his new film MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS chosen to open the competition list of the 60th Cannes Film Festival.

Wong Kar Wai has finally made a film as he has always wanted to. Full of music and with international production, guaranteed by the French-American house StudioCanal. And Wong Kar Wai makes an American movie, permeated of blues and chords by Ry Cooder. Very close to Wim Wenders’ American dreams. With all the icons and fetishes of a foreign look on an America known from far, or from close, on the cinema screens all over the world.

Wong Kar Wai makes his first English spoken film (would it be the dream of any cinephile filmmaker?) and gives the spectators a special toast: the debut of the extraordinary singer Norah Jones as an actress, and not less than main actress in MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS. The film is sweet, as suggested by the title and the serene acting of Norah Jones, even though she doesn’t sing anything.

The singer-actress plays Elizabeth, a broken hearted young woman who keeps on going to the same bar in New York she used to attend with her former boyfriend. The British bartender (Jude Law) pretends to intend nothing, but falls in love with the girl who trusts him with her confidences and eats in the evening the same pie no one eats during the day – blueberry pie with ice-cream.

That’s when the road-movie starts, the wildest dream of foreign filmmakers in the United States. With convertible cars and all the addresses that have already been glamoured by other filmmakers and films. But Wong Kar Wai’s label is there. His love film keeps the formula: suffering, separation, swooning, music for the senses and the triumph of feelings.

More information in :
www.festival-cannes.org

English version: Laura Rebessi