Taking the Plunge
Two Goofballs Grapple for Happiness in 'Love'
Paul Thomas Anderson, the Bard of the San Fernando Valley, serves up a smaller slice of life from his favorite setting in "Punch-Drunk Love." His last two films, "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia," were big, sprawling ensemble pictures that examined some of the Valley's more anonymous denizens pursuing cockeyed dreams of fame and fortune and love. In "Punch-Drunk Love" he zooms in on one man and one woman, for whom fame and fortune are but distant illusions, for whom love is the stuff of cold sweats and missed connections. Anderson is just as adroit with a smaller canvas – he proved that with his first film, "Hard Eight" – but in a weird way he uses it here to make even grander visual gestures. The frame may be smaller in "Punch-Drunk Love," but the picture is bigger.
In large part this is because of a galvanizing central performance by Adam Sandler, who takes on his most serious role to date as the film's central character, Barry Egan. Barry is a loser with a dead-end job – literally. He sells novelty toilet plungers out of one of those generic warehouses at the end of a dusty alley a few blocks from downtown. From this no man's land, Barry works the phone, lining up plunger deals and taking calls from his seven sisters, each of whom has perfected her own way of abusing her little brother. Barry is addled, henpecked, lonely, terrified. He's given to bursts of violence when he's enraged and impromptu soft-shoe routines when he's happy, and after he meets Lena (Emily Watson), a sweet, solemn creature who enters his life one fateful morning, he'll have occasion to engage in both.
Anderson creates an excruciating sense of tension in his movies, and "Punch-Drunk Love" is no exception: You get the sense that Barry is on the edge, capable of anything, and as the weird, unconnected events of his life accrue, you find yourself wincing in anticipation. To heighten the sense of dread, Anderson introduces a plot point involving a maligned phone-sex operator and her thuggish boss (Anderson rep player Philip Seymour Hoffman), but this is a red herring. "Punch-Drunk Love" is about being unmoored and finding ballast by simply willing oneself to be happy.
A lot happens in "Punch-Drunk Love," but none of it makes much sense. The picture unfolds in an episodic string of absurdities, non sequiturs and sudden portents, like the car crash Barry observes as the film opens, and the appearance soon after that of a harmonium on the curb. Longing to escape his vapid job and yammering family, Barry starts collecting coupons to trade in for frequent-flier miles; soon the harmonium in his office is joined by cases of Healthy Choice pudding. You can almost see the PhD theses now: "The Piano and the Pudding: The End of Dissonance and the Possibility of Just Desserts in the Oeuvre of P.T. Anderson."
But it's best not to read too much into "Punch-Drunk Love," which may be most profitably enjoyed as the winsome story of two goofballs in love. The appeal of Barry and Lena depends on the physical grace of the actors portraying them, and both Sandler and Watson are equal to the task. Sandler's mole-like face is capable of both a scowl and the shy smile of a pathological introvert; even when Barry is deliriously happy he doesn't look quite right, which is quite as it should be. Watson's kittenish, wide-eyed persona is also well-suited for a character who's soft but self-contained, unapologetic in her desire.
"Punch-Drunk Love" doesn't have the self-conscious bravura of Anderson's last two films, but the director's signature is everywhere, from a lovely tracking shot that stalks Barry and Lena as they leave a restaurant to the film's bold palette. Anderson dresses Barry in an electric blue suit, and Lena in pleated skirts and soft sweaters of fruity hues, punctuating scenes with abstract washes of color. The outlandish story and exaggerated colors, together with Jon Brion's lilting score and Shelley Duvall's tunelessly looping rendition of Harry Nilsson's "He Needs Me," swirl together to create an ethereal, sometimes sinister dreamscape. You may not remember much when you come to, but it's a weird, arresting little ride while it lasts.
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