My Blueberry Nights [Blu-ray]

Bob Dylan's song "Lovesick" could describe every film Wong Kar-Wai has made since 1988's As Tears Go By. My Blueberry Nights, his first English-language feature, continues the Hong Kong helmer's fixation with the concept. Grammy-winning vocalist Norah Jones plays downhearted New Yorker Elizabeth. When her boyfriend takes up with another woman, she drowns her sorrows in the hand-crafted pie served up by sympathetic café proprietor Jeremy (Jude Law in a charming turn). Lizzie appreciates the support, but decides her best plan of attack is to leave town, so she hops a bus to Memphis, where she waitresses while serving as a sounding board for alcoholic police officer Arnie (David Strathairn), who pines for estranged wife Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz). Later, Lizzie tries her luck in Vegas, where she joins forces with professional poker player Leslie (a brassy Natalie Portman). During her journey, Lizzie sends Jeremy postcards; through her wistful words, he finds himself falling in love. With Ry Cooder's plaintive score (bolstered by tunes from Jones and special guest Chan "Cat Power" Marshall) and golden-hued camera work from Darius Khondji (replacing regular cinematographer Christopher Doyle), My Blueberry Nights reaches for the elegiac tone of Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas as much as Wong's own Chungking Express. It's an odd combination that doesn't always work--the banal dialogue isn't up to the director's usual standards--but lovesickness has rarely been rendered more vividly. --Kathleen C. Fennessy