Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Producers: Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Lupi, Joanne Sellar

Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson

Actors: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman, Mary Lynn Rajskub

Cinematographer: Robert Elswit

Music: Jon Brion           

Rating: R

Running: 95 mins.

 Valley punch drunk comédie humaine

          Paul Thomas Anderson is a Valley Guy (Studio City) and most of his early movies take place there: Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and this one Punch-Drunk Love. For Anderson his native San Fernando Valley is a place just a bit off center--- near Hollywood, on the other side of Beverly Hills and Bel Air, but continents away in ambience and worldview. It’s a place inhabited by second-tier T.V. people, porno workers, want-a-be’s and has-beens. Anderson’s Valley is very removed from the middle-class suburban image once applied to this disconnected third of L.A. located over the hill. His characters are misfits of a sort--- people who just don’t seem to belong anywhere; they live in the Valley because it’s the Valley. The misfit protagonist of Punch-Drunk Love, Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is just such a person.

        Barry is a small businessman who lives in Sherman Oaks and sells toilet plungers out of his warehouse in Chatsworth. He is a total neurotic, on the verge of a complete mental collapse owing to the fact of having been raised the only boy with seven deprecating sisters. He collects frequent flyer miles by buying large amounts of products he doesn't need (Healthy Choice pudding for instance)--- this in  spite of the fact he doesn't go anywhere and doesn't eat pudding. He has no social life, is nervous, quirky, and has uncontrolled fits of anger and crying. His sisters treat him as if he were an idiot and consider him a born loser. His rather incompetent co-workers seem mystified by him, and his foreman Lance (Luis Gúzman)--- a Latino named Lance!!--- appears to be his only friend.

          Things begin to turn around for Barry when he meets Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), a friend of one of his sisters. Lena saw Barry in a photo and was determined to meet him. She thought he looked interesting--- Lena is not your typical match-up. After a shaky start they hit it off.

          But then things get a bit rough. Just before Lena came into his life, Barry, to ease his loneliness and be able to talk to someone, in desperation called a phone sex line and wound up being extorted by the lowlife scammers on the other end. This turns out to be quite serious when the extortionists send four knuckle-brained thugs to collect whatever they can get out of him. 

          When Lena is slightly injured in a car accident caused by the extortion collectors, Barry, now totally in love, and superhumanly empowered, beats the hell out of the thugs, takes Lena to a hospital, and having previously found out the location of the scammers, heads for Provo, Utah, phone in hand, to confront the sex line “supervisor” Dean Trumbell (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a local mattress salesman. Barry and Dean have a heated shouting match ending in a stand-off when Dean realizes he’s dealing with a total nut job. Barry returns to L.A. and seeks out Lena to apologize for leaving her alone at the hospital. She hesitates at first, but then invites him into her apartment. The movie ends with Lena saying, “So, here we go,” as the two of them play a tune on a harmonium.

            This movie has a lot going for it. The structure is quirky, the casting is off-beat (Adam Sandler--- who would have known?) and the humor outrageous. The film is divided into several segments by unusual pastel colored interludes, and the discordant music score definitely fits the quirky mood. Anderson creates characters, who would be funny anywhere, but because this story takes place in the Valley, seem to touch a special nerve for Angelenos who happen to live there--- myself included. 

            What Valleyite cannot identify with Barry lost in the all-too typical labyrinthine halls of Lena’s apartment complex trying to find his way back to her. These gargantuan rabbit warrens dominate the south Valley, my own area of Studio City is full of them. And how about  the utter quiet desolation of the industrial zone of Chatsworth at dawn? Whoever has worked there at night, as I have, can testify what a sudden horrific street noise can do to your nerves. Eckhart Auto on Canoga Avenue, by the way, became world famous owing to its few seconds appearance in the movie. Other places and street names featured in the film also add a touch of reality to this very un-real love story: Barry and Lena’s first date is at the Petit Chateau in North Hollywood (a well-known Valley restaurant, and a favorite of the late Bob Hope), and Barry’s residence is on Moorpark Street, where all the thirty-somethings--- along with the forty-year old virgin--- live

            What Dickens in his novels did for his Victorian London and its lowlife, and Balzac his nineteenth century Paris and its bourgeois middle class, Anderson, in his movies, does for his twenty first century San Fernando Valley and its over-the hill inhabitants: he gives us a look at L.A.’s backyard and the human comedy that can be found there.