By Chen Nan
Updated: 2007-12-21 15:34

 

Wong Kar Wai's first English language feature, My Blueberry Nights, arrives in China this week after wowing audiences around then world. The film tells of a young woman soul-searching journey across America to resolve her questions about love and along the way she encounters a series of offbeat characters.

At this year's Cannes Film Festival Blueberry received mixed reviews. For Wong's hardcore fans, the film lacked the unique mood and trademark rhythms of the director's past films, such as his classic In the Mood for Love.

The tale begins and ends in New York City, at a cafe-bakery owned by Jeremy (Jude Law), a sensitive Brit with a chip on his shoulder. He has a penchant for philosophizing about his customers, particularly the disillusioned types.

Every day, beautiful Elizabeth (Norah Jones) comes in and orders a slice of blueberry pie, then sits and gazes out the window. One night she tells Jeremy her sad story about her lost lover. During the emotional flurry Jeremy steals a kiss and the scene picks up the movie's pace, just like when Maggie Cheung walked slowly down stairs in that gorgeous chipao in In the Mood for Love.

Elizabeth leaves town, setting off on her long journey towards a new beginning. But as the voice-over says, people who take off and pretend to get lost always expect to be found.

She assumes a different identity and befriends various people (played by David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman, among others), each with problems and dilemmas of their own.

Spanning over almost a year, the film is divided into chapters, Day 1, Day 57, Day 300, and the kilometers Elizabeth travels. Once she hits the road, Elizabeth makes major stops in Memphis, Nevada, and Vegas, before returning to New York as a different, more self-aware, or at least less naive, woman.

The film marks a career breakthrough for Wong in terms of a shift in language and locale. However, the director is still chasing a mood, an atmosphere and feelings, in the same way he did in In the Mood for Love.

His camera focus on how people smoke cigarettes and eat food and how windows, door frames and space itself can confine people. In cramped Hong Kong, this impressionistic technique served as metaphor for a way of life. According to Wong, My Blueberry Nights was developed from unedited parts of In the Mood for Love, which did not suit the film back then. Wong kept those plots and moved the location from Hong Kong to US.

The experience of working with an English-speaking ensemble was more fun than challenging, Wong said.

"The culture difference is obvious but I don't think it is a problem. Human feelings are universal, more than that, when we had different opinions, I invited everyone to contribute their ideas," he says.

Wong's recent films, such as 2046 unfold mainly in the narrow hallways and cramped rooms of hotels and apartment buildings in crowded Asian cities, where the men dress in dark suits and the women wear flower-printed cheongsams. Those movies are dense with color and shadow. In My Blueberry Nights, shot in Cinema Scope by Darius Khondji, the colors are still rich and misty, but the wider format gives the compositions a looser, more open feeling.

Like many of Wong's films, My Blueberry Nights is accompanied by voice-over narration. The film goes back and forth between Jeremy and Elizabeth's sides of the story - and their efforts to connect on some level.

My Blueberry Nights opens at cinemas citywide from December 22.

Pulling power of stars

Multi-Grammy award winner (Norah Jones) and Academy Award winners and nominees (Jude Law, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman) have helped Wong Kar-Wai attract major attention.

However when the long-anticipated film comes to China, it becomes a double treat for Chinese-speaking viewers.

My Blueberry Nights will be dubbed in Chinese and big-name actors such as Gong Li, Jiang Wen, Chang Chen, Zhao Wei, Xu Jinglei and Dong Jie will feature.

Professional voice-over actors are usually used for English-speaking films screened but not this time. Wong uses his celebrity pulling power.

Gong Li completed the dubbing work during a 12-hour session. She did the Mandarin voice-over work for the character Rachel Weisz plays in the film, as a favor to director Wong.

Wong was very pleased with the results, saying: "She is not just a very good actor, but also a very good voice-over actor. She understands her characters very thoroughly, very deeply."

Actor-turned-filmmaker Jiang Wen gave his voice to the role played by David Strathairn, rising actress Dong Jie dubbed for Norah Jones, and Chang Chen for Jude Law.