My Blueberry Nights

2007 film by Wong Kar wai

My Blueberry Nights is a 2007 romantic drama film directed by Wong Kar wai, his first feature in English. The screenplay by Wong and Lawrence Block is based on a Chinese language short film written and directed by Wong. My Blueberry Nights stars Norah Jones (in her acting debut), Jude Law, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, and Natalie Portman. The cinematographer of this film was Darius Khondji.

Jeremy, an émigré from Manchester, owns a small New York City café. He provides customer Elizabeth with clues that reveal her boyfriend is cheating on her. Devastated, she breaks up with him and becomes a regular at the diner, arriving late at night for blueberry pie and to share stories with Jeremy. One night, after they are assaulted in separate incidents, Elizabeth falls asleep at the counter. Jeremy sneaks a kiss while she sleeps and she subtly smiles. Later that night, Elizabeth stands on a curb and sadly watches her ex boyfriend and his new girlfriend through their apartment window. Elizabeth, now calling herself Lizzie, drifts to Memphis, Tennessee. She takes two jobs, waitress by day and bartender by night, to earn enough money to eventually purchase a car. She regularly sends postcards to Jeremy without revealing where exactly she lives or works. He tries to locate her by calling and sending postcards to all the restaurants in the area, but to no avail. One of Elizabeth's regulars at both jobs is local police officer Arnie Copeland, an alcoholic who cannot accept that his wife, Sue Lynne, has left him. She openly flaunts her new relationship with a younger man, deepening Arnie's sorrow. He shows Elizabeth his pocketful of AA sobriety tokens and recounts his many attempts at sobriety. One night, while off duty in Elizabeth's bar, Arnie drunkenly threatens Sue Lynne with his gun if she leaves, but he doesn't shoot her. Later on, he drives drunk, crashes into a pole and dies. Elizabeth comforts Sue Lynne at the crash site, where she had first met him, suggesting he may have committed suicide. Before both women say goodbye to the town, Sue Lynne gives her Arnie's tab money, admitting she had made a mistake and she misses him. Heading west, Elizabeth – now Beth – gets another server job at a casino in a small town in Nevada. She meets Leslie, an inveterate poker player who has lost all her money. Elizabeth lends her $2,200 in exchange for the money back, plus a third of her winnings. However, if she loses, then Elizabeth gets Leslie's car, a new Jaguar XK. When Leslie does lose, she fulfills her promise, but asks for a lift to Las Vegas to borrow money from her estranged father. En route, a Vegas hospital calls to inform Leslie that her father has been admitted and is dying. She believes the call is a ruse to lure her back, but upon arrival she discovers that he actually died the previous night. Leslie announces she's keeping the car, which she had stolen from her father. He had sent her the vehicle's title and registration, despite their estrangement. She confesses she actually won the poker game and subsequently helps Elizabeth negotiate the purchase of her dream car. Elizabeth returns to Manhattan and the café, where Jeremy has kept a stool at the counter reserved for her ever since she left. As she eats a slice of blueberry pie, Elizabeth realizes her feelings for him are reciprocated. She 'passes out' on the counter after spending the night in conversation. Jeremy again steals a kiss while she is asleep, but she returns the kiss.

The idea for My Blueberry Nights originated from an anthology film that Wong planned to make under the title Three Stories About Food; one of the film's chapters was ultimately released as its own film, In the Mood for Love (2000), while My Blueberry Nights originated from another short film titled In the Mood for Love 2001, which had only been screened once, at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001. Wong expanded the idea into a road movie that would take place in other locations besides New York, as filming entirely in the state would have been too expensive. Wong chose to make the film in 2005, after the postponement of another film. New Orleans was also considered as a filming location, but ultimately was not chosen because of logistical reasons; Memphis, Tennessee was chosen instead. Wong had Alson come along to Ely for further advice on the film's poker scenes. Other scenes in Ely were to be shot at a bar. Wong, known for last minute decisions, chose a different bar on the day of filming, after concluding with Alson the night before that the bar in Ely was too small. Poker scenes set in Ely were instead filmed inside a poker room that had been constructed inside the Art Bar in downtown Las Vegas, Scenes involving Jones and Portman at the Art Bar were filmed over the course of a week. Other filming locations in Las Vegas included a diner, a car lot, a medical clinic, and the Blue Angel and La Palm motels, all located on East Fremont Street. Scenes were also shot in a hallway at Desert Springs Hospital. Wong said that the film's Memphis segment was a tribute to Tennessee Williams.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2007, with David Lynch’s Absurda, from the To Each His Own Cinema anthology, shown as an opening short. It was also shown at the Hamburg Film Festival, the Valladolid International Film Festival, and the Munich Asia Filmfest before going into limited theatrical release in Canada on November 16. It opened throughout Europe and Asia before opening on six screens in the United States on April 4, 2008, as a limited release. The theatrical US version was edited to be slightly shorter than the version that was premiered in 2007.

The film was released on DVD by the Weinstein Company on July 1, 2008. The film has yet to receive a Blu ray release in the United States. The film debuted on Blu ray on June 23, 2008 in the United Kingdom in a Region B Locked release. Shortly after, a Blu ray was released in Japan on September 29, 2008 as a Region free disc, which also contains the extras found on the DVD.

On its opening weekend, My Blueberry Nights grossed $74,146 in six theaters in the United States, ranking No. 43 at the box office. By the end of its run, the film grossed $867,275 domestically and $21,140,396 internationally, totaling $22,007,671 worldwide. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 52 based on 27 critic reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle observed, "The movie's overall story is modest, and if it were any longer the film might start to drag. But at 90 minutes, it's short enough to be carried along on the drama of its individual scenes and the strength of its performances . The nice thing about Wong is that, like a good gambler, he knows when to bet the farm and when to hold back. Most of the time, he plays it straight, and other times he will speed up the action into a kind of blur, to indicate time passing; or he'll fade out and back into the same shot, as though to indicate renewed focus. Everything he does re creates a state of mind. It's such a relief to realize he's doing everything for a reason and not to show off." Meghan Keane of the New York Sun said the film "keenly displays Wong Kar Wai's aptitude for relationship drama and showcasing the female form, but the Chinese director's American debut often makes the earnest miscalculation of a dubbed foreign film . [I]n translating his fascination with the distances between two people into American vernacular, Mr. Wong betrays an unfamiliarity with his subject matter that often undermines his story . Sadly, [his] interpretation of American lives and landscapes has an alien quality to it. He fetishizes the American countryside, drowns his characters' sorrows in whiskey, and makes plot oriented decisions based on aesthetics rather than continuity or logic. The image of beautiful women in oversize sunglasses leaning against convertibles is not an accurate depiction of Americana – but it doesn't make for a bad visual." In Hong Kong, critical reception was generally mixed. Perry Lam of Muse Magazine compared the film to Wong's earlier work, Chungking Express, and found My Blueberry Nights "a much lesser, more ordinary affair."