According to suburban folklore, a bowl-ful of keys normally suggests that some sort of wife-swapping hanky-pankery is in the offing.

Would that it were in this numbing saga of a lovelorn twenty-something (Jones) drifting through a series of bar and waitressing jobs across America.

The key repository in question is parked on the counter of Jude Law's New York cafe after those unlucky in love have left their Yales as they drift off in search of true romance.

Jones' character Elizabeth discards her own fob and then regales Jeremy (Law) with stories of the emotional chicanery of her ex over a slice of blueberry pie.

Heading outta town, she takes on menial jobs in fly-blown American suburbs where she becomes the sounding board for seemingly inexhaustible tales of woe.

There's Memphis cop David Stathairn, who drinks the blues away as his tarty wife Rachel Weisz flaunts a parade of cowboy lovers to all and sundry.

And there's Natalie Portman's flinty gambler forever seeking to emerge from the long shadow of her overprotective father.

All the time Elizabeth sends missives back to chirpy Jeremy, a Manc in Manhattan whose accent makes more trips down the M1 than a road haulier on overtime.

Thanks to the success of Wong Kar Wei's In The Mood For Love, an A-list of Hollywood's finest - Law, Portman, Weisz - have beaten a path to the director's door.

Unfortunately, they've hitched their wagon to a movie - Wong Kar Wei's first in the English language - that doesn't so much disappoint as profoundly irritate.

Law isn't an actor, just a bagful of jittery mannerisms and tics, while Jones turns in a performance so insipid she gives the blueberry slice a run for its money in the blandness stakes.

Wong Kar Wei brings a first-timer's vision of America - the lurid neons and flashing subway trains are beautifully captured - but any emotional heart, largely thanks to Lawrence Block's dull script - remains resolutely unexplored.

Waiter, hold the blueberry pie.

Tim Evans