(Top) Jude Law and Norah Jones in a scene from My Blueberry Nights. (AFP) Norah Jones at the Cannes Film Festival for the screening of her debut film My Blueberry Nights. (AP)

Cannes, May 16: Although there isn’t an Indian film in competition at Cannes, the daughters of India are everywhere — if the singer Norah Jones, love child of sitar maestro Ravi Shankar and half sister of Anoushka Shankar, can be described thus.

In My Blueberry Nights, which today opened the 60th Cannes Film Festival, Norah, the movie’s star opposite such big names as Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman, turned in a compelling performance. The kiss — lingering, gentle and soft — when Jeremy, the New York café owner, played by Law, removes traces of ice cream from her voluptuous, vermilion red lips will give apoplectic fits to the culture police in India. Or, as one journalist put it later at a news conference, “it was verybeautiful”.

Her debut is all the more impressive since Norah, born Geethali Norah Jones Shankar on March 30, 1979, in Brooklyn, New York, and famous the world over as a singer who has won six Grammy awards and sold over 20 million records, had no previous experience of acting before Chinese director Wong Kar Wai took her on.

At a press conference immediately following the film’s world premiere, Wong, flanked by Norah and Law, explained his surprising choice of his leading ladyin his first English language movie: “The thing that really attracted me was her voice. Her voice is very cinematic. It’s like a very fine instrument.”

The offer was unexpected, admitted Norah. “I was not planning on making any kind of acting debut. I watched one of his films, In the Mood for Love. I thought that’s just the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I thought: ‘Let’s have some lunch’ — may be he wants some music. He says: ‘You wanna be in a movie?’ I said: ‘OK.’ I kinda jumped in. I was nervous but very excited. As soon as I saw the cast list, it was like, ‘Oh, my God!’”

The plot is about a young American woman, Elizabeth, who meets Jeremy in a NewYork café — she is experiencing the painful end of a five-year relationship.

After their brief meeting, she works her way through bars through a number of American cities before realising that Jeremy was important to her. The first kiss was given when she had fallen asleep in Jeremy’s café. The second kiss — and this is not like the one Richard Gere bestowed on Shilpa Shetty — is returned with all the tenderness Wong can muster.

“Kiss — the act — is the same (in all cultures) but the emotion is different,” commented Wong. “What’s before and what’s after is something that’s very different. For Chinese and for westerners may be it’s a different approach.”

He added later: “A kiss means difference (different things) to Chinese characters and to western characters. There is a subtle undertone (about) whichI have to make sure because I wanted to do justice to Americans, to the characters. I believe there is something we can all share even though we are from different races, different countries, different cultures. But some emotions we can share.”

Norah’s view was: “The kiss was the moment that Kar Wai had the most direction about. He was so excited when we did the kiss scene. His face lit up the whole time. He knew exactly what he wanted with the scene and we shot it over a long time.”Law said: “It was very clear that this was a key moment in these two peoples’ lives, a huge turning point both for the film and in their lives.”

Hong Kong-based Wong, who was president of the Cannes jury last year, emphasised: “Cannes is the right place to show the film.”

He made it clear he does not want audiences to see Norah as a singer making an amateurish attempt at playing an actress: “I wanted everyone to perceive Norah as an actress. Our understanding was we wouldn’t put any of her songs. Her performance is strong enough to be seen as an actress.”

However, he did tap Norah’s musical genius. Norah disclosed: “He took a lot of pictures on the road of locations (New York, Memphis, Las Vegas) that he wanted to use and he gave me all the pictures and he asked me to pick some music to match the mood of the music. He ended up using quite a bit of it — I haven’t seen the film yet.”

Wong observed: “Music has no nationality and it works very well in the film.”

He admitted it was not straight forward for a Chinese director to make such a quintessentially American movie (and that, too, using a part Indian singer).

“The main challenge is that it is in English which is not my language. All through the years we have seen a lot of Chinese films made by foreign directors and sometimes it looks very embarrassing. A lot of these Chinese characters have been distorted and it’s too exotic. So I always wanted to make a film in a different language but I wanted to avoid these problems.”

He said he consulted Norah and other members of the cast in order to get American authenticity.

Indian journalists wanted to ask Norah whether she would consider teaming upwith sister Anoushka to do a sexy Asian babes Metro type story — but they were not called. Tonight Norah was due to walk the red carpet at a gala screening of My Blueberry Nights.