A Sarah Miles segue from Ryan's Daughter. She is so young here, her character all giggles, and this is not her best outing. Harold Pinter wrote the screenplay. It's the nightmare of the upper classes, being supplanted and debauched by their servants. The final act doesn't make much sense.
Wong Kar-Wai goes to the U.S. and the local talent turns up to play. As one would expect, the plot is weak but someone thoroughly ruined it by having Norah Jones voice some platitudes between acts. (It may actually be a subtle, deep and penetrating commentary on American values by the Hong Kong set masquerading as a patronising, annoying and entirely banal series of life lessons learnt by an uninspiring ingénue.) It was good to see David Straitharn and Rachel Weisz here, but Jude Law was the only one who succeeds at inflating his character, in his case with boyish English (and I must say, twee) charm.
The cinematography is incredible, as always. Darius Khondji previously shot Delicatessen, City of Lost Children and Se7en (amongst others), and Pung-Leung Kwan worked a lot with Wong Kar-Wai and Christopher Doyle on their earlier visual feasts.
