By Dave McCoy
MSN Movies

I'll admit it: I don't get Wong Kar-Wai. I don't get his movies, I don't get his silly dark glasses that everyone else finds chic and cool, and I especially don't get the universal adoration heaped upon him. It's one of those things I know I should probably appreciate more. Like Björk. Or Thomas Pynchon. Or golf. Or brussels sprouts.

When the Hong Kong (by way of China) filmmaker burst on the international scene with "Ashes of Time" and, more prominently, "Chungking Express" in 1994, he immediately became both a critical darling and cult fan favorite. I found both films boring stylistic exercises. Friends told me his next film, "Fallen Angels," would turn me around. "It's got multiple story lines; you like Altman!" they said. I couldn't make my way through it. "Happy Together," an emotionally brutal gay love story, won him Best Director at Cannes in 1997. I fell asleep during it. His last film, "2046," an experimental sci-fi/time-travel thingy was so pretentious and infuriating and laughable to me that I walked out of the press screening. Of course, it topped numerous critics' top 10 lists in 2004 and that's when I started referring to the director as Wong Kar-WHY? But what about "In the Mood for Love," you ask? OK, I'll give you that one, in that he toned down the "look at me" cheap theatrics and for the only time made me feel something for Kar-Wai's tragic characters. And Tony Leung's performance killed me.

This is my long way of saying that when Cannes announced Kar-Wai's English-language debut, "My Blueberry Nights" (the title alone made my jaw tighten), was the opening-night movie of the 2007 festival, well, I can't write what I said here. But here's the thing: I always give WKW another chance. I always feel like, yes, this is the one that will turn me around! Like brussels sprouts. And so, again, I embraced the opportunity. Hey, this one has Jude Law and David Strathairn and Rachel Weisz! Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, makes a cameo and provides a bunch of the soundtrack. I love Cat Power! Ry Cooder did the score! It's a road movie about lonely, screwed up people. Hey, maybe Wong has made his "Paris, Texas"! It'll be great! Everything is going to be OK! Where is that new Björk album!?

(Oh, wait, Norah Jones is the lead? The pleasant singer whose CD is found in every soccer mom's gas-guzzling SUV? Can she act? Oh, it'll be OK ... go Wong!)

Sigh.

Look folks, I tried ... but "My Blueberry Nights" flat blows. The story is simple. Elizabeth (Jones, who alternates between over-the-top and looking plain lost) meets New York café owner Jeremy (Law) the night she discovers her boyfriend of five years is cheating on her. Jeremy mutters some ridiculous metaphor about love and choosing pies and how no one ever picks blueberry, and suddenly our heroine is coming back nightly to glower and cry and stuff her face with blueberry pie. Here I should add that the café looks like a Vegas casino, as again Kar-Wai lights everything with overwhelming, blaring neon as if he's got stock in some light company. Why? It's atmospheric ... it looks cool, man. And all of his other showy, decorative tricks made the trip to America, as well: the lingering slo-mo shots of actors looking into space (soooo deep), the claustrophobic framing, the melancholy soft focus -- everything, we suddenly realize, to take our mind away from a thin story about lost love and shattered souls that we've seen hundreds of times.

Eventually, Elizabeth hits the road (New York apparently ran out of blueberries) and takes waitressing gigs that introduce her to other tormented beings such as Arnie (Strathairn, solid and powerful, as always), the alcoholic cop who's trashed his suffocating marriage to town tramp Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz, trying on a Southern accent), and Leslie (Natalie Portman), a failed gambler. All the while, Elizabeth and Jeremy keep in touch via postcards, until the day that they might finally close the distance between them and ... blech. It'll probably win the Palme d'Or.

My one consolation happened when I was sitting in a movie theater before the next screening. Two prominent critics were talking to one another. One asked how the other was doing, and he replied, with lovely sarcasm, "I just flew in today and had Wong Kar-Wai inflicted on me." Right on, my brother. You don't by any chance hate brussels sprouts, too?

Tomorrow: Teenage girls in trouble in "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" (beautiful and horrifying) and "Water Lilies," and a Russian makes a long film about suffering called "The Banishment." Shocker.

A demain ...

Dave McCoy is lead editor for MSN Movies. He'll file daily dispatches from Cannes through May 28.

Can you help explain Wong Kar-Wai to Dave? Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com

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