Ill-Informed Gadfly

What a bewitching movie. I’m not even sure why I popped it in the DVD player this week, beyond some inchoate desire to soak up its sunny vibes. Of course, in “Punch-Drunk Love” the fun is hard-earned; first you have to squirm through Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) calling a disreputable phone-sex service from his spartan L.A. apartment, a haiku of bone-chilling despair that director Paul Thomas Anderson stages in a single take.

But “Punch-Drunk Love” slingshots with ease from one emotional extreme to another; less than an hour later, we get the swoony ecstasy of Barry’s rendezvous with Lena Leonard (Emily Watson) in Honolulu. Has Hawaii ever looked better on film? Anderson does it in just a handful of setups; the weather wasn’t even all that good! But he makes it blissful just to soak in the airport tarmac or a phone booth on a downtown street. Waikiki Beach is beyond gorgeous. And then there’s his signature shot, a silhouette of Barry and Lena embracing in a hotel lobby, the sun and surf behind them.

“Punch-Drunk Love” is a triumph of style and tone — and the tone is all over the place. Anderson veers between the nastiness of Barry’s war with the phone-sex creeps to the sweetness of his awkward romance with Lena. She knows she has to take the initiative with Barry, who’s a reasonably successful entrepreneur (he sells novelty plungers, and he’s ingratiating on the phone) but a complete social misfit. He gives her a brief peck on the cheek before leaving her apartment after their first date, castigating himself profanely under his breath. So she calls the front desk of her building and catches him as he walks out. “Wherever you’re going, and whatever you’re thinking, I wanted you to know that I wanted to kiss you just then,” she says. His heart melts — and so does mine.

Upon its release, in 2002, “Punch-Drunk Love” was hailed by Anderson admirers like myself but dismissed by most as a curiosity, an Adam Sandler art film. In my initial zeal, I probably oversold Sandler’s performance. It’s not a brilliant bit of acting by any means. As in several of his borderline-unwatchable comedies, Sandler alternates between a singsongy whisper and guttural rage. The difference is that Anderson provides a reasonable context for Sandler’s behavior, so it’s not just schtick. And Sandler allows us to see the essential sweetness in Barry, even in the midst of his violent outbursts. Barry is damaged goods, thanks in part to decades of psychological torment from his seven sisters. When he berates one sister from that pay phone in Hawaii — “There’s no reason for you to treat me this way” — it’s a triumph of the will.

Lena is a cipher. She’s designed to be the woman of Barry’s dreams, and nothing more. She emerges from nowhere and is flirtatious with him immediately, eventually admitting that she saw his picture and wanted to meet him. (It’s about the only way Barry could meet anyone.) She sees continually how ill-adjusted he is and forgives him everything. She’s lonely, too — divorced, working a job that requires extensive travel, displaced from her native country. (Her English accent is never discussed or alluded to except when Barry, over the phone, amusingly asks, “Where are you from, originally?” She doesn’t answer.)

But Anderson redeems his thin writing by casting Emily Watson, who imbues Lena with an earthy tenderness. She’s quiet and relaxed and conjures a delicate chemistry with Sandler. What’s best, she looks like a real woman, fleshy and appealing, dressed in summery white skirts that flatter her figure. Watson manages to sell Lena’s loneliness. And you can see how she responds to Barry’s decency; she forgives his quirks because she sees the man he’d like to be.

As the title suggests, Anderson stages his romantic comedy in a style that’ll leave you simultaneously woozy and over the moon. Harsh, high-contrast light spills into the frame; crashes and bangs assault your ears. Yet at the same time, the movie offers pure aesthetic delight. It’s such a thrill to see a director who takes risks visually, who understands the vistas that the widescreen frame makes possible — especially in locations that aren’t obvious sources of memorable images, like the sprawling L.A. suburbs. The sound, too, is a marvel. Jon Brion’s inventive score and a few inspired choices by Anderson (in particular Shelley Long’s “He Needs Me” from Robert Altman’s “Popeye”) buttress the theme of Barry finding harmony in his dissonant life.

There’s so much to savor here — the Healthy Choice pudding, Luis Guzman as Barry’s flummoxed assistant, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s repulsive turn as a small-time scam artist, Lena and Barry’s pillow talk about wanting to smash each other’s faces and eat them. Time has not diminished the originality of “Punch-Drunk Love.” It’s a work of art.