Wong Kar Wai's American story
With 'My Blueberry Nights,' he joins a long list of foreign directors who have offered a glimpse at what the U.S. looks like through their eyes.
WITH his ever-present sunglasses and cultivated mystique, Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai has become one of the most distinct brand names on the international cinema circuit. His latest, "My Blueberry Nights," which opened Friday in Los Angeles, has all the tell-tale signs of previous films such as "In the Mood for Love" or "2046" -- interconnecting story lines, an eclectic soundtrack, attractive performers and a dreamy, impressionistic style that adds up to a delirious meditation on romantic love and longing.
Though he previously shot outside Asia when he made "Happy Together" in Argentina, "My Blueberry Nights" marks the first time Wong has worked in English and filmed in the United States.
"The real challenge about working on 'My Blueberry Nights' was thinking in American," Wong said from Hong Kong via e-mail. "Just like when I shot in Argentina, I realized that the local mind set was something you could approach, gaze into, but never really possess yourself. My constant reassurance was the thought that film is universal."
Though the film is full of its own idiosyncrasies, "My Blueberry Nights" places Wong in a long line of foreign auteurs who have come to America to make a film that also winds up being in no small part about America. Though Hollywood has always been a magnet for émigrés -- from Wilder to Woo -- this is distinctly different; these are filmmakers coming to America not for the temptation of "going Hollywood" but rather to explore the idea of America as seen through the camera lens, a reflection and refraction of Hollywood storytelling. . These films, if one can generalize, tend to be odd.
Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni followed "Blow-Up," his look at swinging Sixties London, with a portrait of turn-of-the-Seventies American hippies in "Zabriskie Point." The French filmmakers François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard each briefly flirted with directing "Bonnie and Clyde." Godard later abandoned a project shot in the U.S. in collaboration with documentarians D.A. Pennebaker and Richard Leacock known as "One American Movie."
Frenchmen Jacques Demy and Jacques Deray each took their own look around Los Angeles in "Model Shop" (1969) and "The Outside Man" (1972), respectively. The German Wim Wenders had one of his greatest successes with 1984's "Paris, Texas," and later set up shop in the U.S., while Serbian director Emir Kusturica made the quizzical 1993 film "Arizona Dream" here and has yet to return.
