my blueberry nights (2007)

Blank and beautiful

I happened to watch this film again recently and I can't find anything that better reflects my unaccountable moods of late (can't write shit, but reading a lot); a melancholic mood piece masquerading as a stifled, badly-dialogued road movie, a darkly-lit requiem for long-frayed memories. “I just wanted to see if I can remember what it felt like,” so says Chan Marshall’s My Blueberry Nights character, in her brief cameo.

Indeed, some of my friends (actually, quite a few of them) scoffed at my likings for My Blueberry Nights. Wong Kar Wai aficionados mostly consider it sub par at best, while its wistful aesthetics come across as overly indulgent to others.

Yes it is pretty vacant but I find it hard with each viewing to shake off the film’s many beguiling pleasures. The repetitive pop music. The deliberately off pacing, the swirl of fitful cinematic colors. The ineptness of Norah Jones as a celluloid heroine, the Chan Marshall cameo (apparently Wong was listening to Cat Power songs during the film’s making). The stop-motion sequences that unfurl like woodcut memories. The unknowable strangers that burn their way into your heart.