Latest News:

27th May 2007

My Blueberry Nights opens Cannes

The legendary directer of understatement, Wong Kar Wai opened the Cannes Film Festival on 16th May with his foray into the world of international film making and first full-length english language film. Featuring a rather ecclectic line-up of stars reading like a 'who's who' of hollywood today, My Blueberry Nights stars Norah Jones (yes, THAT Norah Jones!) as the jilted, jaded lover who floats from location to location plunging the murky depths of the human soul in an attempt to find meaning, direction, and ultimately enlightenment. Gone is the neon-drenched imagery of contemporary Hong Kong, instead we are treated to its various American counterparts in the forms of New York, Memphis, and Nevada. Whilst fans of WKW will most likely already be familiar with his highly stylised whimsical ponderings, one can only speculate as to how the mainstream Americana audience will react to Wai's beautiful but often elusive style of film-making (especially with the absence of his golden boy, the brilliant cinematographer Christopher Doyle). Though, judging by the all-star cast sign-up roster featuring the likes of Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Tim Roth, Natalie Portman et al, WKW needs no introduction to hollywood's faddy art-house circle.

Perhaps it was inevitable for WKW to make the tempting transition from Hong Kong to America, and perhaps one can understand the temptation on WKWs behalf to take advantage of this opportunity. After all, his artistic kitsch trademark owes a lot to the aesthetics of western popular culture, albiet fused ingeniusly with the jaunty, metropolitan world of his native Hong Kong, but the glass-half-empty part of me wonders whether he is simply shunning his loyal fan-base and escaping the industry that supported him in an attempt to fulfill his own personal ambitions. Perhaps the "California" featured in his seminal work Chungking Express wasn't a metaphor after all.