Taglines: How do you say goodbye to someone you can’t imagine living without?
My Blueberry Nights centers on a woman, played by singer Norah Jones, who travels across the country searching for answers about love and finding comedic adventures along the way.
A beautiful young woman on the treacherous road to love… “My Blueberry Nights” is the film from one of the world’s most sought-after directors, Wong Kar Wai. It’s a magnificent love story starring multi-Grammy award winner Norah Jones in her movie debut along with a “A-list” cast of Academy Award winners and nominees including Jude Law, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman.
Norah Jones plays a sensual, alluring young woman who sets out on an unforgettable journey of discovery in pursuit of true love. In heartbreakingly beautiful locations and classic Route 66 atmospheric diners, Wong Kar Wai’s captivating heroine encounters a series of enigmatic characters that help her on her quest.
Set against New York’s magical cityscape and the stunning vistas of America’s legendary Route 66, the celebrated director’s first English language picture embraces his signature elegance and originality that made “Happy Together,” “In the Mood for Love” and “2046” must-see movies all around the world.
Wong Kar Wai’s unique talent and dreamy romantic themes, combined with mythical Americans locations and an awesomely gifted and stylish cast, guarantee that “My Blueberry Nights” will delight and enchant moviegoers everywhere.
About the Story
Jeremy (Jude Law) runs a cafe in New York City frequented by Elizabeth (Norah Jones), who finds out from Jeremy that her boyfriend has dined there with another woman. Elizabeth returns to the cafe several times, and she and Jeremy become close. Angry and heartbroken, Elizabeth gives her keys to Jeremy, in case her ex-boyfriend comes to collect them, and takes off for unknown parts.
Going by the name of Lizzie, she takes a bus to Memphis, where she takes two jobs, in a cafe and in a bar, to save money to buy a car. She writes postcards to Jeremy without revealing where she lives or works. Jeremy tries to find her by calling all the restaurants in the area, but fails.
One night at the bar she encounters a cop Arnie (David Strathairn) grieving about the fact that his wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz), has left him. Arnie confides in Lizzie that he has tried to quit drinking many times. After drunkenly threatening Sue Lynne with his gun, he crashes his car into a post and dies. Lizzie comforts Sue Lynne, and the next day Sue Lynne leaves town, giving Lizzie a large tip to put toward buying her car.
Now going by the name Beth, she gets another waitress job, this time in a casino. It is here we are introduced to poker player Leslie (Natalie Portman), to whom Beth lends her savings for gambling after Leslie promises to either win the game, or give Beth her car. Leslie ends up giving Beth her car, saying she lost the game. Beth agrees to give Leslie a ride to Las Vegas, where Leslie’s father lives, so he can lend her money she needs to start gambling again.
Leslie gets a call from the hospital, answered by Beth, informing Leslie that her father is dying. Leslie does not believe it, believing it to be a ruse to cause her to go visit him. They go to the hospital anyway, and at Leslie’s request, Beth goes inside alone to check, where she finds out that Leslie’s father had died the night before. Leslie wants to keep the car because it was really her father’s, and confesses that she lied about losing the game. She pays Elizabeth the money she had originally promised, and she uses it to buy a car.
Elizabeth returns to New York to find her ex-boyfriend’s apartment for rent. She crosses the street to the cafe, and discovers Jeremy has been waiting for her, and has a space reserved for her at the counter. They talk, and it is discovered that they actually have feelings for each other.
About the Cast
Norah Jones as Elizabeth
Norah Jones, the talented singer, songwriter and pianist, who has won over the world with her signature style, made her debut album Come Away With Me on Blue Note Records in 2003, selling 20 million copies worldwide and garnering eight Grammy Awards, including album of the year, best new artist, best female pop vocal performance, and record of the year for the bluesy single, “Don’t Know Why.”
Her second album, Feels Like Home, released in 2004, topped sales charts and was nominated for 4 Grammys.
In 2005 she shared a Grammy with the late Ray Charles for the duet “Here We Go Again.” In 2006, she released an album as part of her band The Little Willies. Her third album Not Too Late was released in January 2007 by Blue Note to critical acclaim and worldwide success, topping the charts on five continents. My Blueberry Nights marks her film debut.
Jude Law as Jeremy
Jude Law is one of the most sought-after talents in the acting world. Jude worked the National Youth Music Theatre, and has appeared in several productions on the West End and at the National Theatre. He has also been very active on British TV and film. For his work in Wilde, playing opposite Stephen Fry and Vanessa Redgrave, he won several awards, including the London Film Critics Circle Awards and the Evening Standard Award.
His American film debut was in the futuristic Gattaca opposite Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. Other films include Sam Mendes’ Road to Perdition, starring alongside Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, David Cronenberg’s Existenz, which also featured Jennifer Jason Leigh and Willem Dafoe, Clint Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, in which he shared the screen with Kevin Spacey and John Cusack, and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s World War II epic Enemy at the Gates.
Law received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor for his work in Cold Mountain. Law was also nominated for both Academy and Golden Globe Awards in 2000 for his performance as “Dickie Greenleaf” in The Talented Mr. Ripley. He received the BAFTA award that year for the role.
His recent film credits include All the King’s Men, opposite Sean Penn and Kate Winslet, The Holiday opposite Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet, Breaking and Entering for director Anthony Minghella, opposite Juliette Binoche and Robin Wright Penn. He recently completed shooting the remake of Sleuth with Michael Caine.
David Strathairn as Arnie
David Strathairn has been active on the American screen since 1979, when he appeared in Return of the Secaucus Seven, the first of seven collaborations with filmmaker John Sayles, among them, Matewan, Passion Fish, Eight Men Out. In addition to his work in “independent films” he has worked with several of the top American film directors, including Mike Nichols (Silkwood), Steven Gyllenhaal (Losing Isaiah), Sydney Pollack (The Firm), Curtis Hanson (The River Wild), Taylor Hackford (Dolores Claiborne), Penny Marshall (A League of Their Own), Tim Robbins (Bob Roberts), and Philip Kaufman (Twisted), and has appeared with some of the greatest actors of our time: Meryl Streep, Kathy Bates, Sigourney Weaver, Debra Winger, Danny Glover, Tom Hanks, Jessica Lange, Christopher Walken, Chris Cooper, Frank Langella, and Al Pacino. For his performance as Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney’s film Good Night and Good Luck David was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Rachel Weisz as Sue Lynne
Rachel Weisz received an Academy Award for her performance in The Constant Gardener directed by Fernando Meirelles (City of God) and based on the best-selling John le Carré novel. She also won the Screen Actors Guild Award as well as the Golden Globe.
Weisz’s upcoming projects include David Dobkin’s comedy Fred Claus starring opposite Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti, Adam Brooks Definitely Maybe opposite Ryan Reynolds, and Rian Johnson’s international con man adventure The Brothers Bloom.
Past film credits include Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain opposite Hugh Jackman, Francis Lawrence’s hit thriller Constantine, Gary Fleder’s Runaway Jury, James Foley’s Confidence and Chris and Paul Weitz’s About a Boy.
She is known to audiences worldwide for her lead role opposite Brendan Fraser in Stephen Sommers’ blockbuster movies The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. She also starred in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Enemy at the Gates, Michael Winterbottom’s I Want You, David Leland’s The Land Girls, Beeban Kidron’s Swept From The Sea. Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty, and Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things on screen and on stage (the film marked her first venture into producing). On stage she also starred in Noel Coward’s Design for Living and Suddenly Last Summer.
Weisz began her career at Cambridge University where she formed the Talking Tongues Theatre Group, which performed numerous experimental pieces and won the prestigious Guardian Award at the Edinburgh Festival.
Natalie Portman as Leslie
Since her debut at 11 years old in Luc Besson’s The Professional, Natalie Portman has appeared in the films Beautiful Girls, Everyone Says I Love You, Mars Attacks!, Anywhere But Here, Where The Heart Is, and the stage production of The Diary of Anne Frank.
While completing her psychology degree at Harvard, Portman starred in the Star Wars prequels, Cold Mountain, the Public Theater’s Central Park production of The Seagull opposite Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Garden State, and Closer for which she was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
Portman most recently starred in V For Vendetta. This year, she appears in Milos Forman’s Goya’s Ghosts, as Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl, and opposite Dustin Hoffman in the children’s fantasy Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.
Chan Marshall as Katya
Chan Marshall is a Georgia-born songwriter famed (as Cat Power) for her minimalist style, sparse guitar and piano playing, and soulful, cathartic vocals. Spin Magazine has called Cat Power “the archetypal rock heroine” in naming her album “The Greatest” one of the best of 2006. She makes her film debut in My Blueberry Nights.
About Wong Kar Wai
Wong Kar Wai was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong with his parents when he was five. He joined the film industry as a scriptwriter and became a film director in 1989. He soon established himself as an extraordinary talent.
His first film, As Tears Go By was screened as part of the `Critics’ Week’ at the 1989 Cannes International Film Festival. His second film, Days of Being Wild was set in a vividly imagined 1960s. This film featured several of Hong Kong’s popular young stars of the time and won five Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Director.
Director Wong spent the next two years working on Ashes of Time, which was shot in remote regions in China. In this film, Wong went against all the standards of the genre to successfully make a period martial arts drama. The film was premiered at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. During a break in the post-production of Ashes of Time, Wong made Chungking Express, which later became a cult hit in many countries. It was also Wong’s first film to have world-wide distribution. After that, he created Fallen Angels, which continued some of the themes he started in Chungking Express.
His next film, Happy Together was premiered at Cannes in 1997 and won him the festival’s Best Director Award. In 2000, In the Mood for Love premiered in competition at Cannes where it was awarded numerous accolades, including the Best Actor prize for Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Four years later, he returned to Cannes again with 2046 which continued to follow the life of In the Mood for Love lead character Chow Mo-wen played by Leung.
Wong also shot a few short films, including a BMW online project, The Hire, as part of a series commissioned by the car company from directors like Ang Lee, John Woo, and John Frankenheimer. He worked on DJ Shadow’s music video Six Days and he directed one part of the film Eros.
His segment starred Gong Li and Chang Chen. The other two episodes were directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Steven Soderbergh.
In May 2006, Wong served as the President of the Jury at the 59th Cannes Film Festival. A month later, he began shooting his first English-language film My Blueberry Nights throughout the United States of America.
Filmography
1988 – As Tears Go By
1990 – Days of Being Wild
1994 – Ashes of Time
– Chungking Express
1995 – Fallen Angels
1997 – Happy Together
2000 – In the Mood for Love
2004 – 2046
– Eros (segment “The Hand”)
2007 – To Each His Own Cinema (segment “I travelled 9000 km to give it to you”)
Comments by Wong Kar Wai
Sometimes the tangible distance between two persons can be quite small but the emotional one can be miles.
MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS is a look at those distances, from various angles.
I wanted to explore these expanses, both figuratively and literally, and the lengths it takes to overcome them.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
My Blueberry Nights (2008)
Directed by: Wong Kar Wai
Starring: Norah Jones, Jude Law, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, Adriane Lenox, Frankie Faison, Benjamin Kanes, Cat Power, Michael May, Michael Hartnett, Katya Blumenberg
Screenplay by: Wong Kar Wai
Production Design by: William Chang
Cinematography by: Darius Khondji
Film Editing by: William Chang
Costume Design by: Sharon Globerson
Music by: Shigeru Umebayashi
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material including violence, drinking and smoking.
Distributed by: The Weinstein Company
Release Date: April 4, 2008
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