No Zhang Zi-yi here: The poster for 'My Blueberry Nights' What's wrong with these people?

The question has lingered for some weeks now in the organic popcorned air of the nation's art houses, rather like Wong Kar-Wai’s own trademark cigarette-smoke curlicues, ever since the director’s My Blueberry Nights finally opened stateside, almost a year after premiering at Cannes.

Indeed what's with these interchangeable sloe-eyed zombies—Norah Jones, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, and (symptomatic cameo alert!) Chan "Cat Power" Marshall—slinking around strangely inert urban backdrops, apparently motivated by nothing so much as the will to power of their own extravagant cheekbones? What's with Jude Law, meant here to evince some sort of alternative soulful masculinity, regarding his unrequited's postcards from the road less as texts than textiles? And what, for that matter, about that road trip, the doughnut-hole in a pastry-soft plot, or the stutter-step slow-mo takes of nothing much in particular, or the sound that often trails the lips, in the service of characters who speak almost exclusively in ellipses?

What's wrong, of course, is that this is a Wong Kar-Wai flick, filled with the inspired Wong Kar-Wai flourishes—random-access memory, cuisine and couture as coitus—that have made Chunking Express, In the Mood for Love, 2046, et al. probably the most admired and altogether geisty cinematic corpus since the end of the cold war. If, as most every responsible reviewer has concluded, Blueberry trades in the sensuous sublimity of those films for an air of profound silliness, it's not really a matter of the craftsman becoming a hack. No, upon some reflection, it's obvious what ruins the latest Wong Kar-Wai movie, so superficially like all the others: The swoony knuckleheads on the screen are white, and speaking English.

Which is to say, what's wrong with me? Why do Asian matinee idols doing narratively inexplicable things for my fetishist–aesthete's delight scream “genius” when Caucasians doing the same barrel head-first over the cliff of camp?

Natalie Portman, with awful blonde wig and indeterminate drawl, gamely chews up the set as card-shark vamp Leslie, but her remarkably corporeal performance—all coquettish flirts, petite curves, and impossibly symmetrical features —only underscores how rice-paper thin her character, and really all the characters here, turn out to be. Zhang Ziyi—Portman's Chinese doppelganger, if you think about it—had to resort to all the same stunts in 2046, but her role somehow felt both brilliant and fully-formed. In the same film, Su Li, played by the veteran vixen Gong Li, smoldered with unresolved mystery; Blueberry's similarly named Sue Lynn, played by the similarly fiery Rachel Weisz, devolves into flat tramp without a cause.

Impossibly symmetrical: Portman in ridiculous wig, with Jones Then, of course, there's Wong's male muse Tony Leung, with his sublimated longing and impassive stoicism. Jude Law's rendition of the same comes off vaguely constipated.

Some observers, in registering the letdown of My Blueberry Nights, have explicitly disclaimed anything lost in translation; "The disappointment here," explains the Village Voice's Michelle Orange, "doesn't have much to do with Wong doing America--he's been doing America for years, even in Chinese." Far be it for me to deny anyone their critical aphorisms, but Orange's universalist—or rather, Hollywoodist—take strikes me as a bit of liberal naïveté. I'm not one for linguistic determinism, but perhaps the reading of subtitles potentiates the suspension of disbelief necessary to appreciate an auteur as dreamily insouciant to plot and pacing as Wong. Then again, I have a pretty complete working understanding of Mandarin, and even I never found Happy Together or In the Mood for Love anywhere near as maddening as Blueberry.

The source of Wong Kar-Wai's American failure might better be glimpsed in a stray passage from the New York Times review of the Cannes cut. "And the characters," wrote A.O. Scott, "are correspondingly relaxed, even in their moments of distress. Whereas their Asian counterparts in other Wong Kar-wai movies — Gong Li, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung — show emotion through masks of mystery and reserve, Ms. Jones and her co-stars invite and promise easy empathy."

Scott, of course, gets it completely wrong and exactly right; the characters in My Blueberry Nights are in fact pure mystery and reserve, which is precisely why the movie seems so underbaked and faintly ridiculous to American audiences. Why this wasn't the reaction to Wong's earlier work gets into all sort of nasty unmentionables—Oriental exoticism and unknowability, the "natural" blankness and indiscernability of the Asian face—but I don't really mean to suggest any insidious bigotry on the part of his Western fan base, least of all myself.

Still, it's a thought worth pondering, and one that (almost) makes My Blueberry Nights worth watching: Like Korean horror or Japanese anime or Chinese wuxia, is it possible that Wong Kar-Wai's international ascendance reveals, above all else, a silent longing for the inscrutable—Hong Kong neon, femme fatales bound in cheongsams—in a shrinking world all too obvious with meaning? If so, are we still allowed to watch?

This picture of Natalie Portman on set pretty much lends itself perfectly to a game of Spot the Inaccuracies. I'll go first: Shouldn't she be wearing a wig? From Jezebel.

Scarlett Johansson: following in the footsteps of other do-gooder masked crusaders Actress Scarlett Johansson announced a plan today that will combine two of everyone’s favorite things: tzedakah and big swanky Hollywood parties. ScarJo will purportedly auction off two tickets to the premiere of her upcoming movie, He’s Just Not That Into You, on eBay. All proceeds from the sale will go to international social justice coalition, Oxfam.

Two winners will not only get to chill with the celebrity Jewess at the premiere, but will also be treated as stars for the day, getting glammed out with a Hollywood makeover, and arriving in style by chauffeured car service. Tikkun Olam has never looked so good!

Johansson is full of surprises lately: A few weeks ago, she told us she was planning on being the next Tom Waits, and now she's venturing into the world of charity. Might she be trying to keep up with her socially conscious co-star, The Other Boleyn Girl Natalie Portman? Maybe, but at least it’s for a good cause.

Related: Walk A Mile In Natalie Portman's Shoes

Letters Of Creation: handmade in israel by netaOnce you're strutting your stuff in a pair of Natalie Portman-designed shoes, you'll want to add a little bling to the outfit. Might we suggest a piece of jewelry from Israeli designer Neta Yehiely? A graduate of the Omanit Art Academy, Yehiely does everything from engagement rings and sets to casual, "spiritual" pieces.

I'm especially fond of her handmade, sterling silver "Letters of Creation" necklace, which you can pick up at Modern Tribe for $72. From MT: "This sterling silver necklace pendant has the 10 Hebrew letters of creation. In the tradition of Kabbalah, G-d is said to have created the world with the Hebrew alphabet."

Check out Neta's entire gallery here.

Pick up a pair of shoes from the 2008 Spring Natalie Portman Collection here.

Have a tip on a great product? Let us know!

Irrfan Khan: thinking about natalieWord on the streets of Bombay is that Natalie Portman and Irrfan Khan are teaming up for a new Mira Nair flick titled Kosher Vegetarian, a love story between a strictly vegetarian Gujarati man and a Jewish woman.

Nair is the director behind films such as Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake, which was Khan's first project with her. He's called the lauded Indian director a "majestic multi-tasker," and said, "I love her spirit. It's contagious. After The Namesake, I was sure we would do something special again."

It's a fitting role for Portman, a longtime vegetarian who recently launched her own line of vegan footwear. Despite her compassion for animals, she was thrown from the back of an aggravated horse on a recent vacation in Kenya while showing off the equestrian skills she picked up on the set of The Other Boleyn Girl.

Related: Walk A Mile in Natalie Portman's Shoes

Natalie Portman: has a shoe fetishNatalie Portman is known for being as socially conscious as she is gorgeous, so it's no surprise that the Israeli-born actress has launched her own line of vegan shoes. In an entertaining interview with the London Times, Portman recently talked about what drove her into the business of footwear. "I’ve been getting stuff from Target, which is de facto vegan because it’s so cheap. But I did need some shoes that weren’t made of canvas or plastic." High maintenance!

Portman apparently designed the line of limited edition shoes herself, and according to various reports, anywhere from 5% to all profits are going to the Nature Conservancy. The cruelty-free kicks are being sold through New York boutique te casan for around $250 a pair.

Portman's latest film, The Other Boleyn Girl, hits theaters this Friday and stars fellow-Jew Scarlett Johannson.

Natalie Portman is considering directing and starring in a film adaptation of the Amos Oz autobiography, "A Tale of Love And Darkness." The Israeli-born actress has met with Jerusalem Capital Studios to discuss the possibility and seems to be pretty much on board. Portman, who is all of 25, would like to play the role of Oz' mother who committed suicide when he was young.

Natalie Portman: Bad girl?In a story one would expect to be about a Lindsay Lohan or a Paris Hilton, The Mirror reports that Natalie Portman (wha?) was recently caught being difficult across the Atlantic. From 3AM:

Filming The Other Boleyn Girl with Scarlett Johansson, Nat, 25, asked the hotel to shut the bar at 10pm, then disturbed other guests with 5am yoga sessions. She persuaded staff to prepare a lavish party for her, Scarlett and crew but couldn't attend at the last minute. One of the staff told us: "We were relieved when she left."

Say it ain't so, Natalie. Well, if it is true, I will say this--Natalie's been pretty damn well-behaved for quite some time, so I guess a "bad girl phase" isn't too terrible--as long as it's a phase. Just don't get all JLO on us, girl.

STORMY PORT IS ON THE DARK SIDE [3AM | The Mirror]