Punch-Drunk Love review

It's clear from the opening scene that director Paul Thomas Anderson has created a starkly warped sense of reality. As the electric blue-suited Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) calmly sups an early morning cup of coffee and surveys the quiet street, a lorry races past before flipping over. A van then pulls up, out of which a harmonium is unceremoniously dumped. Anderson is no stranger to bizarre scenes. Magnolia featured a shower of frogs, but while that appeared out of context with the rest of film, here the opening is merely a foretaste of the eccentricity that follows.

Almost stranger than the opening is the casting of Adam Sandler. The actor is more commonly associated with cornball Hollywood movies than art house fare. Anderson proved successfully with Tom Cruise he was able to see beyond the actor's accepted image. Here he does the same with Sandler, who delivers an uncharacteristically restrained performance as the naïve dreamer Egan. Sandler is able to show that his appeal is not dependent on an annoying voice or buffoonery, and that given a decent script and a resonant character, he has a depth that may yet transcend the dumb persona he's cultivated.

It would be misleading to describe Punch Drunk Love as a romantic comedy, bathed as it is in a dark hue. The relationship between Egan and Lena Leonard (Emily Watson) is as pathetic as it is comic. Both are pitiable, lonely figures hopelessly adrift of society while caught within its conventions. Both wrestle with their inability to communicate their true feelings. This inability becomes a source of anguish and frustration to Egan, whose normally mellow demeanour is prone to violent outbursts. His internal conflict is captured in one of the film's most telling moments, when, during a tender exchange, Egan says to Lena, "I'm looking at your face and I just want to smash it with a sledgehammer."

The two come together when Lena, a friend of one of Egan's sisters, sees his photograph and orchestrates a plan to meet. For Egan, the companionship of a girl other than one of his overbearing sisters is something he's so desperate for he resorts to calling a sex line. The disastrous consequences result in a breakthrough for an enraged Egan who confronts the unctuous sex line owner, played with palpable sleaziness by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Punch Drunk Love's originality and charm lies in the way Egan and Lena struggle to overcome their crippling emotional inarticulacy. It's a testament to Anderson's talent that a mountain of chocolate pudding can mean so much.