Punch-Drunk Love (Anderson, 2002): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm
This film is screening as part of the Paul Thomas Anderson retrospective at the Prince Charles. All the details are here.
Jigsaw Lounge website review:
'Boogie Nights and Magnolia are two of the most thrillingly audacious American films of the nineties. Punch-Drunk Love
is, nevertheless, a quantum leap forward in every respect: watching it
blaze across the screen, you get some idea how those Parisians might
have felt back in 1895 when the Lumiere brothers turned on their
projector for the first time. The art-form has been redefined, and
nothing will ever be quite the same again.
This
is, to say the very least, not an easy film to describe, though
strictly speaking it is an Adam Sandler comedy: he’s Barry Egan, a
hapless, somewhat dweeby loner who runs a small business selling novelty
sink-plungers in suburban Los Angeles. Emotionally stunted and prone to
fits of depression and violence, Barry stumbles into a romance with
Lena (Emily Watson), an English friend of one of his seven sisters. He
buys large quantities of chocolate mousse when he realises a marketing
error will allow him to accumulate millions of air miles for relatively
little outlay. And he’s also being viciously persecuted by a Utah
phone-sex company’s extortion racket…
All
this may sound like a recipe for some kind of desperately zany
weirdness and in other hands that’s probably what might have resulted.
But Anderson’s mastery of word, sound and image transforms unpromising
material into a stunning emotional experience that dazzles on every
level. Cinema’s rules have evolved in fits and starts over these 108
years — it’s staggering to watch one man come along and so beautifully
shatter them all.'
Neil Young
Here is the trailer.
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