Working with a gleaming American cast mostly consisting of exceptional actors, Wong Kar- Wai employs his expected colorful, almost fetishistic visual richness, depicted essentially by glitzy blows of vivid colors in close union to embody the moody impressions of light and tint on people and objects, in this John Rechy-esquire drill concerning a host of lovelorn people, beginning with Jude Law, who runs a café in New York City. Norah Jones finds out from him that her boyfriend has dined in the café with another woman. Jones is furious and leaves him. She gives her keys to Law, in case her ex-boyfriend comes to collect them. She returns to the café several times, and the two become close. She impulsively begins wandering the country, starting by taking a bus to Memphis, Tennessee. She occupies herself as a coffee shop waitress by day and bartender by night, to save money to buy a car. She sends postcards to Law without telling where she is while he tries to find out by calling all the restaurants in the area to no avail.
Kar-Wai is more at ease in the crowded urban muddle of New York and among the seamy city stone fabric of Memphis than he is when the episodic story streams to the petrified Nevada desert, where he hastens through the road scenes in sped-up motion and without the elation in which he wallows the rest of the time. However, the more the drama is enclosed, the more restless Kar-Wai seems to get and his helming of the mood vibrates with romantic passion. Everything is beheld drenched in saturated colors in the company of a stimulating liveliness.
The movie is by no means less than eye-catching and viscerally pleasurable, but the script by Kar-Wai and, of all people, Lawrence Block, the author of corny crime novels like The Burglar on the Prowl, is an combination of segments that run alongside clichés and intermittently feel more affectionate than that. David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman have their shining moments, in particular Weisz in an inebriated admission concerning her marriage to the efficiently gloomy Strathairn, which Weisz conveys in a wringing wet jumble of rage, disillusionment and guilt, and least of which Portman's memorable rendering of her superfluous role as a poker player in a tricky gambling situation. However, Norah Jones herself stays an uncomprehending writing surface on which we are to see whatever we end up seeing.
Kar-Wai is more at ease in the crowded urban muddle of New York and among the seamy city stone fabric of Memphis than he is when the episodic story streams to the petrified Nevada desert, where he hastens through the road scenes in sped-up motion and without the elation in which he wallows the rest of the time. However, the more the drama is enclosed, the more restless Kar-Wai seems to get and his helming of the mood vibrates with romantic passion. Everything is beheld drenched in saturated colors in the company of a stimulating liveliness.
The movie is by no means less than eye-catching and viscerally pleasurable, but the script by Kar-Wai and, of all people, Lawrence Block, the author of corny crime novels like The Burglar on the Prowl, is an combination of segments that run alongside clichés and intermittently feel more affectionate than that. David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman have their shining moments, in particular Weisz in an inebriated admission concerning her marriage to the efficiently gloomy Strathairn, which Weisz conveys in a wringing wet jumble of rage, disillusionment and guilt, and least of which Portman's memorable rendering of her superfluous role as a poker player in a tricky gambling situation. However, Norah Jones herself stays an uncomprehending writing surface on which we are to see whatever we end up seeing.