Black Widow: Exhilarating grrl power

Black Widow (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action violence and mild profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and Disney+

By Derrick Bang

The best superhero movies have a substantial human element that helps ground (if only a bit) the landscape-leveling mayhem that dominates the excessive third act.

 

Black Panther and the first Wonder Woman come to mind, as recent good examples.

 

Pausing for breath, while trying to evade the well-named Taskmaster, Natasha
(Scarlett Johansson, left) and Yelena (Florence Pugh) contemplate their next move.

Black Widow belongs in their company.

The script — by Eric Pearson, Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson — gets its emotional juice from a fractured family dynamic that prompts all manner of interpersonal angst. The result, directed with welcome levels of heart and pathos by Cate Shortland, skillfully balances the slugfests and action sequences with quieter, contemplative moments.

 

This is appropriate, because the title character — Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), aka the Black Widow — has one of the more complicated back-stories in Marvel Comics lore (which this film’s scripters have made darker still).

 

That said, at 133 minutes, Shortland’s film is at least one frantic melee too long.

 

In terms of the ever-more-convoluted Marvel movie timeline, the primary events here take place in the immediate wake of 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The various Avengers are dividing via their response to increased governmental surveillance at the expense of personal freedom; Natasha is on the run, having (apparently) betrayed SHIELD and U.S. Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt). He wants her head.

 

First, though, this new film opens with a seemingly bucolic 1995 flashback that focuses on adolescent Natasha (Ever Anderson) and her younger sister, Yelena (Violet McGraw). We meet them during carefree, girlish play in suburban Ohio, watched lovingly by mom Melina (Rachel Weisz). But this illusion of white-picket-fence ordinariness is shattered when dad Alexei (David Harbour) arrives home, clearly agitated.

 

And we’re suddenly plunged into a Marvel Universe riff on TV’s The Americans.

 

Melina and Alexei are Russian spies, having lived in Ohio as “deep cover” operatives for three years. The latter has just completed their mission, and they must leave now-now-NOW, in order to evade the U.S. government agents hot on his heels. Natasha, old enough to know she prefers their current surroundings to her earlier life in Russia, is horrified to the point of tears; Yelena is too young to have a point of reference.

 

Both young actresses are terrific: particularly Anderson, whose performance — when this prologue hits its climax — is heartbreaking.

 

(Kudos also to the effects team that so convincingly — and spookily — “youthified” Weisz and Harbour.)

The Favourite: Far from it

The Favourite (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R for strong sexual content, profanity and nudity
By Derrick Bang

Director Yorgos Lanthimos relishes his outré sensibilities, as survivors of Dogtooth, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and — most particularly — The Lobster can attest.

Having no desire to return to her formerly penniless existence, Abigail (Emma Stone, left)
does her best to become a valuable part of Queen Anne's entourage ... and, after hours,
an equally essential part of the queen's bed chamber.

The Favourite is cut from the same cloth. While the (more or less) historically accurate setting lends bite to a script laced with delicious bile, snark, betrayal and Machiavellian palace intrigue, the laborious execution quickly becomes tedious. Rarely have 119 minutes passed so agonizingly slowly.

Lanthimos also delights in overwrought directorial self-indulgence, which — through excessive repetition — becomes insufferably annoying. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s fondness for panning “around corners” with a fish-eyed lens is one such affectation; the assortment of thumps, twangs and screeches that passes for a score is even worse. An extended presentation of two plucked notes on guitar (?) persists for what feels like forever, linking several lengthy scenes; one cannot help wanting to dash into the projection booth and eviscerate the audio track.

Tellingly, no composer is credited for anything that approaches actual music. No kidding.

A director who delights in calling so much attention to his tics, hiccups, quirks, whims and eccentricities does his film no favors. Lanthimos’ approach distracts and rips us out of the story; he’s like a little kid who, vying for attention, repeatedly screams, “Don’t pay attention to them; look at me! Look at me!”

Rubbish.

Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara’s script has its basis in fact, with events set during the first decade of the 18th century, midway through the reign of Great Britain’s Queen Anne. She was not a happy or healthy ruler, and was ill-suited to the throne; timidity and chronic ailments made her miserable. Despite 17 (!) pregnancies, she failed to produce a surviving heir, and became the final monarch from the House of Stuart.

Anne was quite pliable, and had the misfortune to rule just as Great Britain was embracing an acrimonious two-party political system, with the Whigs and Tories squabbling over how best to handle an ongoing war with France. It’s perhaps fortunate that Anne’s most trusted confidante was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, who — it has been strongly suggested — essentially ruled from behind the scenes. Although clearly governed by her own agenda, and inclined toward decisions and acts that favored her husband — John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough — Lady Sarah was intelligent, astute and decisive.

She also may have been Anne’s lover, and this is the film’s jumping-off point; Davis and McNamara boldly run with that sexual element. 

My Cousin Rachel: Relatively dreary

My Cousin Rachel (2017) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for sexuality and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Oi ... such a yawn.

This fresh adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel is a true Masterpiece Theater melodrama: sweeping English countrysides, coastlines and quaint villages; slow, silent glances exchanged between artificially polite aristocrats; and soft-spoken dialog pregnant with implication.

Having come to believe that his earlier impression of Rachel (Rachel Weisz) was
unjustified, Philip (Sam Claflin) decides to show her the letter — from his deceased
guardian — that prompted such mistrust.

But absent Jane Austen’s verbal wit and sparkle, or the suspense and directorial snap that Alfred Hitchcock brought to his 1940 handling of Du Maurier’s Rebecca, this period piece is a rather dull affair ... particularly since Sam Claflin’s protagonist is such a callow, foolish and unforgivably whimpering weenie.

It’s impossible to sympathize with somebody so relentlessly naïve, and who possesses so little personality. He’s like unfinished clay, at the mercy of whoever chooses to mold him.

Nor does director/scripter Roger Michell — who did so much better with Venus and Notting Hill — bring much to these proceedings.

Du Maurier had a habit of giving her protagonists no more than their first names, and thus this saga focuses on Philip (Claflin), orphaned since childhood and raised by his guardian, Ambrose Ashley. The boy grows up on a large country estate on the Cornish coast, where the only women permitted within the walls are the many farm dogs. (Surrey’s West Horsley Place, a lucky find, has just the right mid-19th century ambiance.)

Such details are revealed in a brief narrative flashback, as a grown Philip returns home following a university education that left no significant impression. He finds the estate bereft of its owner, Ambrose’s “health issues” having sent him on a lengthy trip to Italy’s warmer climate. Contact is maintained via letters that Philip shares with his godfather, Nick Kendall (Iain Glen), and Kendall’s daughter, Louise (Holliday Grainger).

Louise is sweet on Philip, but he’s oblivious to such affection, having no experience in such matters (to a degree that becomes increasingly difficult to credit).

The letters continue; Ambrose writes of meeting and marrying a distant mutual cousin named Rachel. They remain in Italy, and then the tone of his letters changes; it seems clear that Rachel has some sort of unhealthy hold over Ambrose. A final letter begs for Philip’s presence, with haste ... but his arrival in Florence is too late. Ambrose has died, and Rachel has left; all such details are revealed during a curt exchange with Rainaldi (Pierfrancesco Favino), a “friend” of Rachel’s whom Ambrose clearly mistrusted.

Back in Cornwall, Philip learns from Kendall that Ambrose never changed his will; Philip remains sole heir to the estate, which will come to him upon his rapidly approaching 25th birthday. This scarcely cheers the young man, enraged over his belief that Rachel somehow caused the death of his beloved guardian. When she sends word of an impending visit, Kendall and Louise caution against “rash” behavior.

They need not have worried. Even in widow’s black, Rachel (Rachel Weisz) is a vision. Philip, cowed by her politeness, deferential manner and apparent fragility, retreats to the cordiality demanded by his upbringing.

Which — right there — is a transition that Claflin can’t begin to sell. Righteous rage to cowed silence, in the blink of an eye? Seriously?

I think not.

And, in turn, all subsequent developments become contrived and equally unpersuasive.

Denial: Profound courtroom drama

Denial (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, disturbing images and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

This film fascinates in all sorts of ways.

Most notably — and, obviously, the reason it was made — director Mick Jackson’s absorbing, rigorously faithful drama shines a necessary spotlight on longtime Holocaust denier David Irving, and the shameful lengths to which he went, in an effort to legitimize his odious beliefs.

As Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) watches nervously, QC Richard Rampton (Tom
Wilkinson, standing) prepares to address another of sham historian David Irving's
deplorable claims.

American viewers — at least, those who didn’t devour the escapades of John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey — will be equally intrigued, possibly even astonished, by this film’s well-crafted depiction of the British legal system, and specifically how it differs from the U.S. court system, with respect to libel suits.

Most impressively, though, scripter David Hare — adapting historian Deborah E. Lipstadt’s memoir, Denial: Holocaust History on Trial — has crafted a parallel dilemma that focuses on Lipstadt herself, played superbly here by Rachel Weisz. Lipstadt’s struggle to remain true to her own conscience and principles, and her reluctant recognition that she must — simply must — have faith in others, is just as compelling as the courtroom duel that dominates the film’s second half.

The title, therefore, is deliberately double-barreled: As well as signifying Irving’s standing as an unrepentant Holocaust denier, it also represents the tremendously difficult choice that must be made by the passionate, fiery and independent Lipstadt, to swallow her pride and deny a public outlet for her own righteous indignation.

We know the legal outcome; it’s obvious — given Hare’s source material — even for viewers who didn’t follow the case, while it unfolded during the final four years of the 20th century. But few outside of Lipstadt’s friends and inner circle would have known how this case affected her on a personal level; Hare and Weisz give us an intimate and thoroughly absorbing view of how Lipstadt faced this challenge, and — with the help of a superb legal team — ultimately triumphed.

The case began with a whisper in 1993, with the publication of Lipstadt’s book, Denying the Holocaust. She acknowledged Irving within those pages, briefly but trenchantly, labeling him a Holocaust denier, a racist, and a falsifier of history.

(It’s important to understand that although Irving’s charitable views of Hitler and Nazism never were taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was a tireless writer, having published more than two dozen books. Regardless of how he was regarded by the world, Irving viewed himself as a serious academic and valid historian.)

The Light Between Oceans: Not bright enough

The Light Between Oceans (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.2.16

Embracing an overblown melodrama requires an act of faith on the viewer’s part: a willingness to sympathize with the protagonists — to understand and accept their behavior as reasonable — even if (when) they yield to ill-advised impulses.

After several failed attempts to start a family, Tom (Michael Fassbender) and Isabel (Alicia
Vikander) finally are rewarded with a child of their own ... but in a rather unexpected
manner, and one that will have tragic consequences.

But if they cross the threshold of acceptable conduct — if they betray our trust with an act too bewildering, or heinous — then the film’s hold on us is broken. The spell under which we’ve allowed ourselves to be placed, shatters like a broken mirror.

Such is the case with scripter/director Derek Cianfrance’s adaptation of Australian author M.L. Stedman’s 2012 novel, The Light Between Oceans. Because, despite the best efforts of its two talented stars, there comes a moment beyond which we cannot maintain sangfroid: a plot hiccup that is, indeed, unforgiveable. Compassion, and the patience to put up with anything that follows, are lost forever.

Mind you, the film’s contrived plot and execution require considerable endurance to begin with. Cianfrance’s lackadaisical approach is old-style Hollywood, by way of Thomas Hardy or the Bronte sisters. He and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw favor extremely tight close-ups, and while Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander respond to that challenge, with nuanced expressions, the technique grows tiresome.

So does Alexandre Desplat’s melancholy orchestral score. Mind you, I’ve been an avid fan of Desplat’s work ever since 2003’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, but his despondent themes here hammer the melodrama; the despair is relentless. And with Cianfrance subjecting us to 132 minutes of this morose character study, it’s just too much.

No doubt everything worked in Stedman’s novel; this sort of saga was born for the literary form. But as a film, with a self-indulgent director who prefers long-suffering gazes to expository dialogue, one can’t help feeling that he’s piling on the schmaltz and noble sacrifice with a shovel.

The setting is the remote edge of Western Australia, immediately following World War I. Tom Sherbourne (Fassbender), a shell-shocked veteran, has come to the tiny community of Partaguese in order to accept a posting as keeper of the crucial lighthouse, on the isolated and otherwise uninhabited Janus Rock. The island is miles from land, approachable only by boat, although the light keeper’s house has running water and all essential amenities (handy, that).

Tom is quiet, withdrawn and stoic: unable to understand why he was spared, when so many of his comrades perished on the battlefield. The experience has left him uncomfortable in the company of other people; his seclusion on Janus Rock isn’t merely by way of comfort, but to some degree — in his mind — some sort of necessary, self-imposed punishment, for having survived.

Youth: Ponderous claptrap

Youth (2015) • View trailer 
1.5 stars. Rated R, for graphic nudity, sexuality and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Goodness.

I haven’t seen a film this obtuse and pretentiously arty since Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books, back in 1991.

Mick (Harvey Keitel, left), Lena (Rachel Weisz) and Fred (Michael Caine) spend their
evenings watching the various singers, musicians and dancers hired to amuse the
guests of this opulent spa: performances that are far more entertaining than this film.

And it has been a good quarter-century, being spared that sort of self-indulgent twaddle.

Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino’s newest effort, Youth, has all the hallmarks of a Greenaway head trip: the same casually nude people, randomly draped like living room décor from one moment to the next; the same slow takes on still lifes, whether spacious, cow-laden fields or abandoned lawn chairs; the same jarring application of frequently discordant music.

The same droning soliloquies and dry-as-toast conversations by top-flight actors who appear to have been coached not to show emotion, or react in a manner that might be recognized by ordinary people.

In a word — no, in three words — boring, boring and boring.

Retired composer and conductor Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) and defiantly vigorous film director Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), friends for decades, are vacationing at an opulent hotel/spa at the foot of the Swiss Alps. It’s the sort of Art Nouveau establishment — complete with oddly detached and/or just plain weird staff members — that Wes Anderson lampooned so deliciously in last year’s Grand Budapest Hotel.

(In fact, it’s the Berghotel Schatzalp, a former luxury sanatorium built in 1900 for tuberculosis patients. Make of that what you will, given how Sorrentino has chosen to use this setting.)

Fred and Mick have reached their twilight years: the point at which each has too many yesterdays to remember with any accuracy, and too few tomorrows to anticipate with any degree of pleasure. Casual conversation sticks to “good things,” which is to say they tend to avoid topics that might get prickly, or that invade the other’s deeply private space.

“Good things” also apparently includes sharing their respective urinary accomplishments — or lack thereof — and a series of ongoing bets over whether the couple at an adjacent dining table, oddly silent evening after evening, ever will actually speak to each other.

Oz, the Great and Powerful: Enchanting trip down the yellow brick road

Oz, the Great and Powerful (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG, and rather generously, for considerable fantasy peril, scary scenes and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.8.13

Disney got it right this time.

The Mouse House’s previous attempt to sequelize L. Frank Baum — a high-profile release in the summer of 1985 — was a dark and dreary affair, its rich Oz-ian landscape sabotaged by a grim atmosphere and a level of peril that bordered on child abuse. Opening Return to Oz with a sequence that finds little Dorothy sent to a primitive psychiatric ward, and nearly subject to electro-shock therapy? What the heck were the screenwriters thinking?

Having worked out a plan to steal the wicked witch's magic wand, thus removing her
ability to fight back, Oz (James Franco, right) and his two companions — Finley and
China Girl — wait for the proper moment to strike.

Oz, the Great and Powerful, in pleasant contrast, is a rich, imaginative and droll delight from start to finish. To be sure, its protagonists face their share of peril — the winged monkeys were the most terrifying part of 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, and that’s still true in this new film — but the tone is more appropriately adventure-scary, rather than psychologically twisted.

More to the point, scripters Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire — drawing from more of the rich material in Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — have fashioned a prequel that cleverly imitates the style and formula established by the beloved 1939 musical, while also laying the groundwork to anticipate key events in that earlier film’s storyline.

That’s no small accomplishment. Better still, director Sam Raimi and editor Bob Murawski pace their film perfectly, alternating essential character development with fantastical encounters both exhilarating and unnerving.

And — as was the case with Tim Burton’s recent re-boot of Alice in Wonderland, also for Disney — Raimi doesn’t slow the pace by pausing and calling attention to Oz’s myriad wonders; they’re simply present to be enjoyed, if even noticed the first time through. I predict hot home-video sales and plenty of repeat viewings, in order to spot and savor everything that production designer Robert Stromberg and visual effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk have packed into this film.

Heck, when a dozen or so “horses of a different color” graze quietly in a field — not even noticed by our main characters, let alone commented upon — you know that we’re in good hands.

The story, set in the early 20th century, begins roughly a generation before the events in the 1939 film. We’re once again in a small Kansas community — displayed in time-honored black-and-white, in a squarish, standard-frame image — this time in the shabby, sepia-toned “tent city” of a worn and seedy traveling carnival. Its various sideshow attractions include Oscar Diggs (James Franco), nicknamed Oz, a flashy stage magician and rake of dubious ethics who likely has a woman at every stop ... with an angry father or husband right behind her.

The Bourne Legacy: In good hands

The Bourne Legacy (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for considerable violence and grim action
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.10.12

Any doubts about the Bourne film series surviving Matt Damon’s departure can be laid to rest; replacement star Jeremy Renner capably opens a new chapter in Robert Ludlum’s popular franchise.

Pursued by both police and an anonymous, shadowy adversary,
Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) and Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz)
hijack a motorcycle and attempt to escape in the confusion of
Manila's insanely crowded streets and alleyways.

Although it’s perhaps not the chapter fans were expecting.

Ludlum, who died in 2001, wrote the three books made into the film trilogy that featured Damon between ’02 and ’07. Ludlum’s estate sanctioned Jason Bourne’s literary revival in an ongoing series of sequels by the prolific Eric Van Lustbader, who thus far has written seven more, starting with 2004’s The Bourne Legacy.

But although this new film shares the same title, that’s all it shares. Like most latter-day James Bond films, which also borrowed Ian Fleming’s book and short story titles — and nothing else — director/co-scripter Tony Gilroy concocted an entirely new narrative suggested by Ludlum’s conspiracy-laden premise.

And rather than tagging a new actor to play Jason Bourne — thus cleverly leaving the door open for Damon’s return, at some future point — Renner is introduced as Aaron Cross, one of several “sidebar assets” in the U.S. black ops agency’s clandestine Treadstone project.

Gilroy scripted all three of Damon’s Bourne films; he also wrote and directed the sleekly sinister George Clooney vehicle, Michael Clayton, and had fun riffing on industrial espionage with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, in 2009’s Duplicity. So it’s safe to say that Gilroy knows the territory.

Gilroy wisely takes his time with the first act of this new film, introducing Cross during an extreme survival training session in the Alaskan wilderness. Details are sketchy, aside from the same heightened senses and reflexes that characterized Bourne; Cross also carefully maintains a daily regimen of pills — one blue, one green — that are safeguarded in a container worn around his neck.

Back in D.C., high-level spook Eric Byer (Edward Norton) frets over the public appearance of Dr. Albert Hirsch (Albert Finney), recognized from the previous film in this series. Similarly, Pam Landy (Joan Allen), Jason Bourne’s former handler, has threatened to go public with Treadstone’s seamier details.

Feeling that they have no choice, Byer and fellow conspirator Mark Turso (Stacy Keach) decide to shut down Treadstone and its half-dozen human assets, despite their highly effective work in various world hot spots. And in this realm of unsupervised behavior, “shutting down” has lethal ramifications for said assets.

The Lovely Bones: Broken

The Lovely Bones (2009) • View trailer for The Lovely Bones
2.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity and a very grim storyline
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.21.10
Buy DVD: The Lovely Bones • Buy Blu-Ray: The Lovely Bones (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

Likening herself to a snapshot — a moment frozen in time — young Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), during her concluding voice-over in The Lovely Bones, laments that she was here but for a moment ... and then gone.

If only the same could be said of the film itself.

Susie (Saoirse Ronan) enjoys helping her father (Mark Wahlberg) with his
hobby of building ships in bottles, even as she playfully teases him about it;
he describes the way in which such a painstaking hobby instills the discipline
of seeing things through, and -- waving a hand vaguely toward shelves filled
with bottled tiny ships -- promises that "One day, all this will be yours."
His daughter, with a horrified glance, can't be sure it's a promise or a threat...

Director Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's grim novel — which Jackson scripted with longtime collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens — is a dull, dreary and dispiriting slog. It feels like a self-indulgent vanity project that got entirely out of hand. Jackson obviously wanted to make portentous statements about death and the despair of a human soul left with no means to take care of unfinished business ... but all this gets lost amid leaden pacing, irritating plot points and monotonous, hippy-trippy images of the afterlife.

Seeing this film immediately on the heels of Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus made for an interesting comparison. Both films are a mess, in different ways, but Gilliam's chaotic dreamscapes at least have the benefit of being relevant to his storyline. The luxurious realms in which Susie finds herself trapped, in great contrast, pointlessly interrupt the flow of a (potentially) more interesting narrative.

I'm reminded of old-style movie musicals, where the actors would break away from a dramatic moment, often quite jarringly, in order to launch into a song. You'll get just as irritated here, each time Jackson cuts to Susie's fixation with the same damned gazebo.

And it's a shame, because The Lovely Bones begins well. We're fully involved with these characters up to the moment Susie's life is snuffed, and quite horribly; things fall apart only later — and this is the bulk of the overlong 135-minute film — when the girl refuses to "move on," preferring instead to find out to what degree she can, or should, hang around and attempt to influence matters back in the mortal world.

My Blueberry Nights: Sweet dreams

My Blueberry Nights (2007) • View trailer for My Blueberry Nights
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.1.08
Buy DVD: My Blueberry Nights • Buy Blu-Ray: My Blueberry Nights [Blu-ray]


Some films luxuriate in their display of technique and mood, the characters' actions sometimes shunted aside so we can reflect upon what brought them to this point, and (more crucially) what might be necessary to propel them anew.

With no other friends in whom to confide, a heartbroken Elizabeth (Norah Jones)
tentatively reaches out to compassionate café owner Jeremy (Jude Law); their
resulting friendship gives her the strength necessary to begin a journey of
self-exploration.

Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai loves the richness of atmosphere; he indulges in arty set design and inventive camerawork, always striving to convey the contemplative, troubled state of mind that he obviously believes characterizes so much of humanity. His films move slowly — some would say much too slowly — while following the actions of protagonists whose feelings smolder beneath a surface veneer usually dictated by social custom.

2000's In the Mood for Love, for example, followed the relationship of chance that develops between stars Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, when they learn that their respective spouses (whom we never meet) are having an affair. What, then, might our protagonists' next move be? A supportive friendship? Their own extra-marital fling, prompted by spite?

The decision unfolds against the gloomy hallways and darkened rooms of an apartment complex in 1960s Hong Kong: often more dream than reality.

Wong's films are an acquired taste: eclectic and temperamental for their own sake, but unfailingly generous to actors willing to conceive and then inhabit richly intriguing characters, suggesting their thoughts and desires via small gestures and minimal dialogue.

"Sometimes the tangible distance between two persons can be quite small," Wong has said, "but the emotional one can be miles."

His English-language film debut, My Blueberry Nights, is very much in this spirit: a quiet examination of a young woman who decides to find herself in the wake of a relationship gone sour. The resulting drama is pure road trip; she journeys across the United States and touches down in this city or that, pausing long enough to become a catalyst in the lives of other troubled souls.

She learns, as do we, that no matter how tragic our own experiences seem, somebody else is having a much tougher time. And, sometimes, watching others fail to cope — watching them sink for the third time — is all the prodding we need to get our own act together.

The young woman is Elizabeth (sultry jazz/folk singer Norah Jones, in a respectable acting debut), and her story begins in New York, where she has just learned that her boyfriend is cheating on her. The news is delivered almost accidentally by a compassionate café owner, Jeremy (Jude Law), who remembers his customers not by their faces, but by what they order; he recalls Elizabeth's "pork chop" companion having been in with somebody else.