Love on the brink of chaos

The electric blue suit that Sandler wears throughout the film was, according to Anderson, inspired by a similar suit in Vincente Minnelli's great movie musical "The Band Wagon." But there's an association with another famous movie suit: the dark blue one worn by Cary Grant in "North by Northwest." As Grant runs for his life across the country that suit becomes his armor, a merit badge for remaining dapper under stress. As "Punch-Drunk Love" moves from L.A. to Oahu to Utah and then back where it began, Barry's suit functions in the same way for Sandler. Like it, he's true blue. Like the interpolated montages of swirling color by the artist Jeremy Blake, the neon blue of that suit stands for Barry's emotional blossoming. He earns the right to wear it, and so does Sandler.

Appearing at a press conference after a New York Film Festival showing of "Punch-Drunk Love," Anderson told the assembled press that he wanted to treat the process of making the movie as if he were making an album. I think what he meant is that he didn't want to be afraid to wing it, and certainly this movie feels less fussed over, less written, than any of his previous films. Anderson, who loves actors as much as any director working, trusts his two leads to get into the movie's emotional groove and carry it forward; he trusts their silences and glances to speak as much as their words.

This step downward in scale is a step forward for Anderson in intuitiveness. How it will play with audiences is another question. The movie is likely to disgruntle those who go in expecting another Adam Sandler comedy, and it may be prejudged by critics and other moviegoers who can't stand Sandler. (Nothing like giving a guy a chance, eh?) There has always been a streak of resentment in some of the reactions to Anderson's movies. It could be due to the bigness of his work in an age of diminished expectations. Some older critics may regard Anderson's naked desire to achieve the heights of '70s American filmmaking -- an era they feel proprietary about -- as the mark of an upstart.

Perversely, it's Anderson's emotional openness that has fired up some of his loudest detractors. The idea that Anderson could portray a group of porn stars and filmmakers as a loving, dysfunctional family sent some critics into a hissy fit over "Boogie Nights" (even though many of the veterans of the golden age of porn talk about their experiences in just those terms). Perhaps the way that Anderson most resembles Altman is that his empathy and compassion are sometimes reduced by an affinity for sarcasm that borders on crassness, and there are moments when "Punch-Drunk Love" toys with that.

But Anderson's movies, whatever their flaws, are never underfelt. He is a filmmaker who can have his hero say, as Barry says of Lena, "I have a love in my life now, and it gives me more strength than you could ever understand" without feeling the need to parody it or couch it in irony. The spirit of the classic American romantic comedies is far from the spirit of today's prefab movie romances. Where today's romantic comedies end on an assurance that everything will be fine from now on, the great romantic comedies were dedicated to taking risks. The lovers often felt more punch drunk than happy, but that was part of the deal. "Punch-Drunk Love" ends on a moment of quiet contentment, though it offers no guarantees for what lies ahead. And that may be the most heartening thing about it.

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