Directed and co-written by Wong Kar Wai, who made In the Mood for Love, My Blueberry Nights is a road movie that takes us down the highways and byways of broken hearts. But instead of the great open spaces beneath big American skies usually found in road movies, this is mostly set in the grimy interiors of diners and the booze-fumed dankness of barroom dives. In place of narrative drive, Wong prefers the reverse gear of remembrance and rumination. His emotionally battered characters brood and bleed.

One of them, Elizabeth (Norah Jones), has been dumped and betrayed by her two-timing boyfriend. When she goes searching for him at his favourite cafe, she meets the cute owner, Jeremy (Jude Law), a Brit from Manchester who, having been dumped himself, offers her the solace of blueberry pie and a side order of sympathy. They bond, but Elizabeth goes off on a voyage across America, a 300-day journey, mostly by bus, looking to mend her broken heart by enjoying the unattached freedom of the long-distance drifter. On the way, she ends up working in Memphis as a bartender and waitress, and encounters the story of lovesick Arnie (David Strathairn), the alcoholic cop whose wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz), is having an affair. Then Elizabeth goes to Nevada and works as waitress at a casino, where cardsharp Leslie (Natalie Portman) borrows money from her; together, they hit the road to nowhere. What unites these different tales is the theme of addiction – to love, gambling and alcohol.

Alas, Wong’s film is the work of an art-house tourist whose entire sense of American life and culture comes from the cinema and not from real experience. He fills the screen with iconic clichés: the Vegas poker table, the Nevada desert, city diners awash with the glow of Edward Hopper gloom, and blurred neon lighting up the night. He’s even got the old Ry Cooder slide guitar on the soundtrack. But this is not America: it’s another foreigner’s fascination with Americana, and we’ve seen it too many times.

This familiarity would be forgivable if the stories that Wong and his co-author, Lawrence Block, tell had any dramatic strength. Wong’s past films have had that wonderful tension and mystery that comes from a sense of restraint and repression, but in America, everyone has their heart on their sleeves, which drains the film’s drama of anything dark and mysterious. It strives to be a torch song soaked in late-night Sinatra sadness. We should hear the sounds of hearts breaking and the low mumble of lonely, lovesick barflies coming through the smoke. But all Wong manages is a kind of droopy wistfulness. He frequently has to resort to a soulful soundtrack, such as Otis Redding singing Try a Little Tenderness, to summon up the mood that his actors can’t deliver.

Jones, making her screen debut, doesn’t embarrass or distinguish herself: she’s a competent actress for a singer. But then, after the story of her lost love has been told in the opening section, she just has to stand there listening to others and not bumping into the furniture. Wong has no interest in realism, which is good because Law looks like one of the kitchen staff and not the owner of a diner. He has a smile that stretches into a grin and keeps right on going until, exhausted, it collapses into a grimace. Not even the great Strathairn can give the film the dramatic boost it so badly needs.

At times, the screenplay strives for a plaintive profundity and ends up merely pretentious and laughable, as when Elizabeth says: “Goodbye doesn’t always mean the end, sometimes it means a new beginning.” This is Wong’s first English-language film, and I, for one, hope it will be his last. Something got lost in the translation: his talent.

12A, 95 mins

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