Punch-Drunk love
Punch-Drunk love
États-Unis, 2002
Avec : Adam Sandler, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Emily Watson
Durée : 1h31
Sortie : 01/01/2002
Punch-Drunk Love is the Paul Thomas Anderson’s fourth film after Hard Eight, Boogie Nights and Magnolia and aspires to be a lighter, more relaxed movie after his previous flamboyant ventures. A simple hour-and-a-half love story instead of a three-hour sweeping character piece, Punch-Drunk Love doesn’t seem to have much to do with Anderson’s other films. But that’s just a question of outer looks, because the film very clearly has ‘P.T.A.’ written all over it
First of all the Anderson ‘tribe’ is partly reunited: Luis Guzman and Philip Seymour Hoffman are there, as well as the DP and composer of his previous films (Jon Brion once again delivers). Second of all his directing stays way up to par, and manages to bring life into a cliché story.
Anderson loves his characters, be they Barry Egan (Adam Sandler in an unusual yet not groundbreaking performance) or Lena (Emily Watson), a young woman whom we know just as much about as the frogs in Magnolia. The way he portrays dysfunctional people with so much care and compassion is reminiscent of last year’s The Royal Tenebaums by Wes Anderson.
The movie won the directing prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Though it’s a minor film in a great career, Punch-Drunk Love proves that even ‘lesser’ films can be memorable when they’re in the hands of a good director, as Fincher and Soderbergh already showed us with Panic Room and Ocean’s Eleven.