Embriagado de Amor

No business looking this good with beautiful/subtle lighting. Strange & random but a warm tone that is just lovely. The screenplay is ridiculous but masterfully crafted. Simple yet uniquely profound with a great score & cast.

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. No business looking this good with beautiful/subtle lighting. Strange & random but a warm tone that is just lovely. The screenplay is ridiculous but masterfully crafted. Simple yet uniquely profound with a great score & cast.

. .

. No business looking this good with beautiful/subtle lighting. Strange & random but a warm tone that is just lovely. The screenplay is ridiculous but masterfully crafted. Simple yet uniquely profound with a great score & cast.

I caught this at the New York film festival and my expectations were about as low as they could be. I was never a huge Adam Sandler fan, and I hadn't ever taken a liking to PT Anderson's other films. I thought that Magnolia was pretty flimsy writing-wise, and I also thought that it got way too much undue attention when it came out.

I couldn't believe how great Punch Drunk Love was. It seems to be the polar opposite of Magnolia. Where Magnolia was sprawling, messy and often generic, Punch Drunk Love is short, tight and completely fresh. It reminded me of Fargo, in a way. It centers on a very small cadre of characters, it's incredibly focused, and it creates its own world for those characters to live and move around in.

It's been mentioned here before, but the art direction is stunning. I haven't seen such memorable visuals since The Royal Tenenbaums. In a grocery store scene, the items are stacked vertically by color (echoing the color bars that appear periodically between scenes), making the scene appear otherworldly. Other sets are bare of color or distinction. Sandler's love interest in the film (played by Emily Watson) lives in a maze of white corridors. Somehow, every "place" in the film has its own character and association. Even the characters become associated with particular colors.

The movie ends up being genuinely romantic while deviating completely from the very stale paradigm for romantic comedies of the last decade: Watson's character pursues Barry Egan; their inability to hit it off from the start is more character-driven and psychological than situational. Through the use of bizarre props and surreal scenes, the anxiety and frustration of Barry Egan becomes totally absorbing and affecting.

This is a wonderfully directed film. There isn't an extraneous moment. The visual style and pacing are particularly great. There's an interesting subtext in the film about communication - enormous background noise while characters are on the phone, Barry Egan's sisters' voices create this wall of noise (all voices making fun of him), telephones figure predominantly, the opening scene is completely bereft of background noise or music. There are a lot of interesting things to consider when it comes to the theme of communication and how sound is handled in the film.

That said, I'm already cringing at how most people are going to react to this. The Adam Sandler fans might find it too weird. People who liked PT Anderson's other movies might find it too pretensious. I was thrilled to have my low expectations completely overturned. This movie is great.

I saw Punch Drunk Love at the Gothenburg film festival today and I was totally overwhelmed by it. I had really looked forward to it since I love Paul Thomas Anderson's earlier films. Magnolia is still among my top five favourite movies ever and my expectations were therefore almost too high. I must admit I was sceptical of Adam Sandler playing a serious part. But he makes fantastic interpretation of his character Barry Egan, a small business owner pushed around by his seven (!) sisters who's miserable life takes a turn when he meets love in Emily Watson's character. Watson makes a beautiful portrait of the mysterious and lonely Lena who falls in love with Barry.

The movie isn't just well acted, it's also magnificent to watch. The camerawork is exquisite and Anderson really shows of his visual talent. Every frame in the one and a half hour film could be frozen and displayed as a piece of art. But the most impressive thing in the film is still Adam Sandler. Every word, expression and nuance is perfect and genuine. If this doesn't deserve an Oscar nomination I don't now what will. His performance is superior to the last five winners.

Punch Drunk Love is the way a movie should be. It's the way you wish all movies were like and I wish I could hang it on my wall. The poster will have to do.

One of my old English teachers once asked us about a book, "Did you all like the book? I'm not asking whether you enjoyed it; I don't care. I want to know if you liked it." She was making an important distinction.

I remembered that as I watched Punch-Drunk Love. It's very unusual. The film is set in L.A., but you don't see much scenery indicating that. You see unpleasant things. Adam Sandler's office is long and empty: just seeing him sitting at his desk assaults you with a feeling of loneliness (not because of any sappy music--but because of the set and the camera work). He walks out into a never-ending warehouse; it feels empty, brutal. He exits the warehouse and you see another unending sight: the row of garage-like doors of all the other warehouses. It feels like it lasts forever, this row of doors, and when Adam gets to the end of it, he looks out onto a long, straight, industrial, empty street. It looks HORRIBLE, but why? Nothing is happening on the street, there are no gruesome sights, no particular signs of squalor or anything, and yet you feel repulsed, hopeless, alone. Then, out of the distance, a car whizzes by, nothing unusual, but it feels abrasive. With no relation at all to the plot, just as it appears, this car hits something and explodes, its remains slide off into the distance and you see nothing more of it. It's trivial. But you feel like the movie is being hostile toward YOU, the viewer.

Yes, that's the best way I can put it: you feel like the movie is being hostile toward YOU. A few minutes later, a truck flies by, again very abrasively, and drops a harmonium in front of Adam Sandler. There is no rhyme or reason to this, it just happens, and it's all very unpleasant.

About a third of the way through the video, my phone rang. I told my friend what I was watching, and she asked how it was. I told her, "I can't decide. I'm not sure I like it." I kept watching. At the end, I understood. What I had meant to tell my friend was that I wasn't enjoying it. And I wasn't meant to.

The film starts out with a very bad point in Adam Sandler's life. He is neurotic, you want to kill his sisters even though they're not malicious per se, he is lonely, his life is unpleasant. This movie is trying to do more than TELL you it's unpleasant, and even more than SHOW you it's unpleasant: the movie is trying to get inside you and make you FEEL it. You seriously feel the abrasiveness of every image, every sound, every character; you feel accosted by it. When there's silence, it's brutal silence. When there are sounds, they're brutal sounds. Images and movements are abrasive. Until Adam's life begins to flourish: then you get pretty sounds, pretty colors--as the viewer, you're let off the hook, too.

So when it was over, I was in amazement. How many movies succeed at this, at taking you WITH them to the discomfort the character is living? The cinematography, the sound work, the script--none of it is any accident. When his life isn't going well, you FEEL it. Did I like the movie? Very much. And if you appreciate a very unusual take on an old topic, you will too.

This is a great movie (my opinion) and here's why...it shows two characters falling in love and acting stupid. They don't have all the right things to say to each other; they get scared; they walk away and wish they had said something, anything other than what they did/didn't say; they get embarrassed, they giggle and snort...and the list goes on.

If you don't like this movie, it's OK. I think this is the kind of movie that is sorta just sitting there, waiting for the "right" people to see it and nod their heads and smile and say, yes, this is how it is. It's quiet and doesn't scream for people to pay attention to it; it's just there. It doesn't make any promises and it doesn't need to.

The storyline may veer from "real" life, but these two characters pretty much get it--what people do when they are very much "in love" with someone.