Film

Like Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, My Blueberry Nights is a case of a visionary foreign director traveling to America and refracting it through his distinctive worldview. It’s also possible that like Zabriskie, Nights will one day be seen as an eccentric and memorable look at the U.S.: It’s a road movie that visits only four cities—New York, Memphis, Las Vegas and Ely, Nevada—and that unfolds largely indoors. The characters speak English with the cadences slightly off and write letters instead of sending e-mails. The plot pivots on a meet-cute at a coffee shop where no one orders blueberry pie.

In short, the elements that seem off—that seem Wongian—are what make Nights interesting, even though the movie never comes together in any conventional sense. (It’s now 20 minutes shorter than it was at Cannes.) Wong essentially portrays America as the sum of its stereotypes: Weisz provides a welcome infusion of verve as a cuckolding Memphis wife, and a floozied-up Portman is certainly unusual as a poker player on the run from her father. But the central love story—between vacant Jones and winsome Law—finds Wong spinning his wheels; until the end, the characters never have a transcendent moment, like the great “one-minute friends” scene from Wong’s Days of Being Wild. Despite being shot on a soundstage, Dogville was a more coherent aggregation of received Americana.