'The Girl on the Train' review: Téchiné's latest fails to satisfy...

‘The Girl on the Train’, a new film directed and co-written by the multi-award-winning André Téchiné, is very much a film of two halves. Apparently loosely based on a real-life event infamous in its native France and set within the context of a wave of anti-Semitic hate crimes, the film follows a young girl named Jeanne who one day tears her clothes, cuts herself and draws swastikas on her body, before claiming to the authorities that some youths attacked her whilst she rode a train. She adds to the recent concern about racist attacks by claiming that she was singled out because she was carrying the business card of a Jewish lawyer, also suggesting that crowds of people on the train saw the incident and did nothing to intervene. The media quickly buy into this lie and run with the story sparking popular outrage across France. Soon Jeanne’s mother is taking calls from the nation’s President expressing his sympathies for the attack. The second half of the film deals with Jeanne telling the lie and its aftermath (much of which is based on reality), whilst the first half is Téchiné’s attempt to understand why she told this lie and deals with the (highly fictionalized) events leading up to it.

If Téchiné is considered one of France’s most significant post-New Wave filmmakers, then it is only fitting that the film does not come without names of top acting pedigree also. The Belgian actress Émilie Dequenne (who won the ‘Best Actress’ prize at Cannes in 1999) heads up a well-respected cast as she plays the titular girl, Jeanne. Her troubled and well-meaning mother, Louise, is played by the Academy Award nominated Catherine Deneuve (a frequent Téchiné collaborator), whilst the Jewish lawyer and hate crime activist, Samuel Bleistein, is played by Michel Blanc (a star of Téchiné’s last film, ‘The Witnesses’). Finally, a rising star, Nicolas Duvauchelle (who was also in last year’s Claire Denis film, ‘White Material’), plays Jeanne’s streetwise boyfriend Franck. It is their love affair which dominates the film’s first half and attempts to go some way to explaining Jeanne’s later actions.



The cast do an able job with the material they are given, however the film feels strangely like a low-budget television drama. There are some nice shots and many scenes (notably those in the sunshine) are pleasantly lit, but it is paced far too slowly and outstays its welcome fairly quickly. There are whole scenes which seem to serve no obvious purpose in advancing Jeanne’s story. For instance, there is a sub-plot (involving a bickering divorced couple who later sleep together and then finally reconcile) which could easily have been excised from the film entirely. When I first saw the film I was unaware of the “true story” element and (not having read a synopsis) did not know that Jeanne was going to stage a racially motivated hate crime by beating herself up. The fact that when she did it came as a huge surprise to me (and seemed to alter the tone of the film so completely) I think counts against the film, as the first half which leads up to the event and is supposed to provide some sort of character motivation and simply fails to do so. I am still none the wiser about Jeanne's motivations.

We are left asking questions, such as: did she do it for attention? But we could have asked those questions had the film only depicted the “true story” events. Téchiné sheds no light on this extraordinary lie and its consequences. He depicts Jeanne watching a holocaust documentary and weeping. He also shows that she has seen the news reports of the previous (genuine) hate crimes against Jewish people. But neither of these moments really add up to pretending you've been persecuted. Perhaps Téchiné is suggesting that she feels marginalised and suspects that the only way she can get her voice heard is by capitalising on this media event. We are left intrigued to find out more about the real-life case, but not especially thrilled by or satisfied with Téchiné’s film.

'The Girl on the Train' is out in the UK now on a limited release, including one showing at Brighton's Duke of York's Picturehouse on July 20th. The film is rated '15' by the BBFC. Jon and I covered it in the latest Splendor Podcast also.

'Sex & the City 2' review: Shameless, tacky and unstoppable...

“Look! Arabic Pringles” says Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) as the camera goes into a shameless extreme close-up on the branded potato snacks. They have been provided by a Middle Eastern airline bringing her, along with her equally vacuous and materialistic friends, to a luxury holiday in Abu Dhabi. “We need to go somewhere rich” says Samantha (Kim Cattrall), when encouraging the “girls” to join her on this all expenses paid trip (their New York penthouses are not considered “rich” enough it would seem). Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) foolishly decides to bring a cultural guide book along and she is rightly derided for this with Carrie derisively asking “Are you moving there?” Indeed. Why would one want to know anything about the country they are visiting? As Samantha so rightly says on the eve of their trip east, “I can hear the decadence calling!” Welcome to the world of ‘Sex & the City 2’.

‘Sex & the City 2’, directed and written by Michael Patrick King (providing once and for all the infallibility of auteur theory), is an odd and strangely hypnotic film. I should have hated it to the core. However, not far in to its 146 minute running time I resolved that the film was a satire of its brazenly selfish, hedonistic and superficial protagonists and everything about their there way of life (so obviously hideous is everything they say and do and physically embody). Viewed in this way the film is sort of amusing. For instance, the horrifying cadaver that is Kim Cattrall (who I’m sure the writer thinks is a modern day Mae West) looks and acts exactly like Sam Lowry’s excessively vain mother in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 dystopian sci-fi movie ‘Brazil’, always boasting about how many treatments and injections she has endured all with the noble aim of fighting the aging process. “I am fifty-fucking-two and I will rock this dress!” she shouts at a hapless clothes store clerk in the manner of a demented and embarrassing old spinster aunt in a way which the film supposes is some sort of milestone for female empowerment.



Then we have Carrie whose ‘Wonder Years’ style disembodied narration serves as the film’s dubious moral centre. Carrie is a relationship columnist of international renown and acts as a sort of female version of the James Bond wish fulfilment fantasy. At one point she walks into a “wardrobe” bigger than most people’s bedrooms (and full of expensive designer clothes) and I distinctly heard two disparate ladies in the audience say “cool!” ‘Sex & the City’ is to women what ‘XXX’, ‘Fast and Furious’ and Danny Dyer movies are to men, in that they are not really for women at all: just for stupid people. If Samantha is deluded and slightly nauseating, then Carrie is just downright hateful. She makes her husband go out with her to a party, ditches him for her friends and then drags him home when she sees that he is starting to have fun (talking to Penelope “why am I here?” Cruz). For their anniversary her husband buys them both a flat screen television for the bedroom (getting a derisive chuckle from the ladies in the audience) but his intentions are decent and even romantic: he wants to lie with her and watch “old black and white films” in bed. She is indignant and, in the manner of an ungrateful child, says “a piece of jewellery would have been nice”. What a horrible person (but then Bond isn’t much better as a role model for male behaviour). Carrie and her friends feel like the subjects of an MTV reality show.

A bit huffy from television-gate, Carrie decides to spend a few days back at her old apartment. “The last two years haven’t been the best time to sell an apartment” she explains. It makes economic sense for her to keep the place empty and sell it on later and this is all that matters in her universe. Don’t worry about the people who are being forced out of their homes in the wake of global recession: they probably deserved it and in any case they are far too poor for us to care. So Carrie has two places and when she returns to this one after two years away, she finds it as she left it: fully furnished, with a huge, walk-in wardrobe (still full of high fashion clothes). But in this world Carrie isn’t disgusting at all, apparently.



And apparently neither is Charlotte (Kristin Davis) who denies her Jewish surname (Goldenblatt) as soon as they arrive in the Middle East in fear that it might spoil her time drinking cocktails by the pool. These are clearly people of principle. My personal favourite bit saw Carrie talking to one of her butlers in Abu Dhabi about the difficulties of maintaining a marriage. He explains to her that he is Indian and comes to Abu Dhabi to work, only flying back to see his wife when “I have time off work and can afford the plane fare”. But instead of this being a wake-up call to make Carrie see just how easy she and her pals have it (and to how sickeningly bourgeois their existence on this Earth has become) this story is mined for romance, with the manservant explaining that his love for his wife increases in their time apart. The grim economic reality of the poor people who pander to their every whim on the dessert resort (in a modern form of indentured servitude) is mentioned but simultaneously completely ignored.



The film can’t make up its mind what it thinks of the Middle East either. On the one hand we have Samantha gallivanting around the market square thrusting her hips and shouting “I have sex” at the local outraged men, her hands full of condoms (I am not making this up). On the other hand we have Miranda constantly trying to cover Samantha up and apologise for her behaviour. Together the women laugh at a lady in a burqa as she lifts her veil to eat French fries at the next table in a restaurant, but then they also gasp in wonder at the cultural sites they encounter on their trip and befriend a kindly man in the market (“shoes for everyone!”). Overall the cultural and historical morsels Miranda derives from her guide book (in the form of strained exposition) seem to serve as more of a disclaimer than anything else: giving the “girls” the right to say and do whatever grossly insensitive things they want to in this horrible movie. Generally their intolerance of local custom is played for laughs. The film’s crowning insult to the Middle East is in one the final scenes in Abu Dhabi, in which a group of women remove their burqas to reveal that underneath they are wearing similarly “fabulous” clothes to their American counterparts. You go girls! Whether you see this film as an example of cultural imperialism or of female empowerment you surely can not deny that it is unfailingly tacky.



There is so much more to find horrifying in this film. For instance, Liza Minnelli shows up as a singer at a gay wedding doing a version of Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’ which makes you want to erase her entire career (even the stuff with Bob Fosse). There is a really cringe-worthy sub-plot involving a bra-less, Irish nanny and Charlotte’s basic inability to parent her own children: “and I have full-time help!” she says, admitting her own basic inability to function as a competent member of the human race. There is Samantha saying “word” without any trace of irony as well as the concept of an “interfriendshon”. There is a horrid karaoke scene in which the “girls” sing “I Am Woman”, swaying in unison and holding hands, forever uniting in bonds of unquestioning sisterhood. But what would be the point of going on about this obviously critic-proof film for any longer? “That should take the edge off the reviews” says Carrie, referring to Samantha’s admission that she will likely bed the star of a bad film. In the case of ‘Sex & the City 2’ good box-office will not only take the edge off the bad reviews, but will shred them into total and utter irrelevance.

'Sex & the City 2' is out everywhere now (including Brighton's Duke of York's Picturehouse) and is rated '15' by the BBFC.

TV... the new film?

OK, so "no". TV is not the new film and worries about that little box replacing the cinema have proved largely unfounded since they started in the 1950s. Although the availability of moving pictures in living rooms has had a massive impact on attendances and on the target demographic of the movies (with films becoming increasingly aimed at teenagers over the last half decade): the movies remain relevant as an art form and as part of the popular culture.

So why the title of this post? Just because television used to be rubbish. Even the good stuff was of obvious poor quality compared to a movie. But now there are (American) shows which have the production values of a big budget movie for an hour every week. It used to be the case that actors would have trouble breaking into movies from televsion, but now many movie actors readily and regularly accept roles on television (Kiefer Sutherland in '24' (video below), Tim Roth in 'Lie to Me', Glenn Close in 'Damages' and the late Patrick Swayze in 'The Beast', as examples of a growing trend).



What is especially great about these shows is that they are not trying to be movies at all, but that they use the form of television to do something films can not do. A show like 'The Wire' (which follows a Baltimore police teams attempts to bring down a drug king pin in the face of local politics and staggering bureaucracy - although that description doesn't come close to doing it justice) tells a richly detailed story over many hours, all of them essential. You couldn't do that with a film. Not to the same level of journalistic rigour that David Simon and Ed Burns do with that show. They were equally brilliant with the Iraq invasion series 'Generation Kill', really putting you in that place and making you feel (as they did with Baltimore) that you know every inch of that place and every nuance of that scenario.

David Simon and Ed Burns are an example of another encouraging trend in US TV: that of the auteur driven drama series. Aaron Sorkin ('The West Wing', 'Studio 60'), David Chase ('The Sopranos') and Matthew Weiner ('Mad Men') are all writers of intense, detailed and dialogue driven TV shows which are far above the vast majority of what the cinema has to offer in terms of their intelligence. The acting in these shows is often dazzling with 'The West Wing' a good example of the new cross-polination between film and TV in terms of actors, as it stars Hollywood names (Martin Sheen and Rob Lowe) and also created new ones (Allison Janney and Richard Schiff).



Complicating things further is the changing nature of how people view media. In a few years, when both the latest episode of a big budget TV thriller and the latest "blockbuster" Hollywood thriller are available to stream instantly on your laptop or phone whilst you ride the train to work: what will be the difference between the two? Is there a distinction anymore, other than the fact that the "TV" show will likely have between 10-25 sequels ready to download should you want to continue the story?

Anyway, film is not dead and TV will not kill it. But now, more than ever before, television is more than a substitute for the movies: when done properly it is better than film. Yet television is still not really taken seriously in the world of media criticism. It is analysed in terms of news reporting or in terms of its affect on society, but television shows are not afforded the same respect by academics and critics. Is this all about to change? Another decade of TV like the above and it just might.

"Sam Rockwell? What's he been in?"

For years I have been waxing lyrical about the acting talent of Mr. Sam Rockwell, the Californian actor who was most recently seen in 'Iron Man 2'. But often when I tell people about how good he is I am struck by the fact that they don't have a clue who I am talking about. He's been in plenty of films, but when I come to explaining where people may have seen him I end up drawing a blank as despite his long and varied filmography he has not really been in many things you can guarantee people will have seen.

So here are five clips which act as a celebration of his range and talent and represent your guide to the essential Sam Rockwell:

One of my favourite films of last year, 'Moon' (directed by Duncan Jones), stars Rockwell as a man who works (in complete isolation) on the earth's moon. In this interesting piece of low-budget, British science fiction Rockwell is called upon to completely carry the movie and hold the audiences attention. I have chosen a clip which gives nothing away, but in doing so I can't really show you any of the most poignant or humourous moments. Anyway, here is Rockwell in 'Moon':


In 2001, he appeared opposite Gene Hackman in David Mamet's superior thriller 'Heist'. He more than holds his own in this dialogue heavy Mamet film and would steal the show if it weren't for Hackman. Here is a short (but funny) clip:


Probably my favourite scene from the brilliant 2007 Western 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' (directed by Andrew Dominik) sees three really good actors sharing a tense scene. The main business here concerns Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, but Sam Rockwell is really good too, giving the scene a real nervous tension and an anxiety as he finds himself trapped between two increasingly insane characters. He brings so much to a role which may otherwise have blended into the background:


Probably the most overlooked Charlie Kaufman screenplay (and disowned by the writer himself who disliked director George Clooney's take on the material) 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' (2002) starred Sam Rockwell as Chuck Barris, a gameshow host (indeed the real life creator of 'Blind Date' and 'The Gong Show') turned covert CIA agent. Here he is given the opportunity to be funny, insane, charismatic and dangerous in equal measure:


Whilst he is often called upon to be comic (broadly so in the likes of 'Galaxy Quest', 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and 'Gentlemen Broncos'), he is sometimes given intense and purely dramatic roles, such as his turn in Ron Howard's 2008 film 'Frost/Nixon'. Here he is the morally indignant journalist who pressures David Frost into using his Nixon interview as a trial for the disgraced leader:

'Frost Nixon' Difficult Questions en Yahoo! Video

Of course, as I mentioned in the review, I really enjoyed him in 'Iron Man 2', which you can still see in cinemas. I highly recommend checking out any of the above also ('Frost/Nixon' is deeply floored, but still a decent film and the others are just great). His next "big" role is in another Jon Favreau directed comic book adaptation 'Cowboys & Aliens' - a film produced by Steven Speilberg and Ron Howard and co-starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. A more low-key role will see him opposite Hilary Swank and Minnie Driver in the upcoming drama 'Betty Anne Walters'. Rockwell will ensure I go to see both of them!

June's 'Flick's Flicks', Dennis Hopper passes away and Del Torro quits 'The Hobbit'...

First things first, Guillermo Del Torro has quit as the director of the upcoming adaptation of 'The Hobbit'. Reaction to this has been split between people who feel glad that Del Torro can now pursue his own projects and those who were eagerly anticipating his take on Tolkien's "Middle Earth" (there is presumably a third group who don't care either way and a fourth group who haven't heard for Guillermo Del Torro in the first place).

I am undecided as to what to make of it: part of me thinks that even though I didn't like Peter Jackson's version of 'Lord of the Rings', I was excited to see what Del Torro would do with 'The Hobbit'. Although a bigger part of me would rather see the Mexican make one of his own, more personal films instead. It is yet unknown who is replacing him as the director for the two planned movies which will tell the story of how Bilbo Baggins meets Gandalf the wizard, comes into possession of "the one ring" and defeats an evil dragon.

Next up, I said a while back that I would soon be hosting some episodes of 'Flick's Flicks', Picturehouse's monthly film preview show usually hosted by Felicity "Flick" Beckett. However, Felicity's imminent maternity leave means that I am taking over hosting duties for the next three shows (July, August, September). To prepare you for those upcoming episodes, here is the most recent installment as Flick prepares us for June:



On a seperate note, I have been busy recently writing reviews for an upcoming volume from Intellect Books which looks at British cinema. So far I have submitted reviews for Mike Leigh's 'Happy-Go-Lucky' (which I love), Mike Newell's 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' (which I don't really care for) and the Ealing comedy 'Passport to Pimlico' (which is really brilliant). I am currently (as in as soon as I stop this blog entry) writing my review for 'Trainspotting', which will be submitted tonight!

I also recently become attached to another upcoming book from Intellect, this time on American Independant cinema. I have been given some really great titles to review and I am really enthusiastic to be a part of it.

Finally, I can't end this post without mentioning the sad passing of Dennis Hopper, who died on Saturday after a battle with cancer, a mere two months after recieving a star on the 'Walk of Fame' in LA. In a long and varied screen career Hopper was seen in such classics as 'Apocalypse Now', 'Rebel Without a Cause', 'Blue Velvet' and 'Hoosiers', working with many great directors along the way (among them Francis Ford Coppola, Nicholas Ray, George Stevens, Sam Peckinpah, George A. Romero and David Lynch). In the 90's, after some time in the wilderness, he became something of an iconic movie villain in the big budget actioners 'Speed' and 'Waterworld'.

But he will rightly be most fondly remembered as the co-writer, director and star of 'Easy Rider' in 1969, a film which helped to establish the so-called New Hollywood of the late-60's/early-70's (along with other films like 'Bonnie and Clyde' and 'The Graduate') and became a key and lasting document of the counterculture of that era. Whilst Hopper's own politics would change significantly in later life (he appeared in the "conservative comedy" 'An American Carol' in 2008), that film still partially defines an era of massive social change and keeps that spirit alive on celluloid fourty years on.

The film, which also starred Peter Fonda, helped to launch the acting career of Jack Nicholson and popularised the Steppenwolf track 'Born to Be Wild' (which would be used in adverts for years, always along with a visual referance to the opening shots of 'Easy Rider'). Not many filmmaker's can really claim to have changed cinema, nor can many films be considered truly "iconic": indelibly becoming part of the popular culture. With 'Easy Rider' Dennis Hopper achieved both and his memory will live on forever with that film.

Dennis Hopper (1936-1910) - a true Hollywood great.

'The Happiest Girl in the World' review: Outstanding Romanian comedy...

Once in a while a film comes along that really surprises you. Completely knocks you back. Fifteen minutes into Radu Jude’s ‘The Happiest Girl in the World’ I came to the realisation I was watching such a film. Romanian cinema has been experiencing something of a critical golden age over the last decade, with the so-called New Wave climaxing in 2007 when Cristian Mungiu’s ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Anyone who watches Jude’s film will find themselves assured that the good times are not yet over for the former Soviet state’s film industry.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am fond of tightly made little films which focus on a small number of characters and have almost no “plot” in the conventional sense. ‘The Happiest Girl in the World’ is another film in this fine tradition, with relatively little going on in the plot department. A young girl called Delia has won a competition by collecting the labels from a fruit drinks bottle and is entitled to a brand new car, as well as a starring role in an advertisement for the drink. To collect her prize and to film the commercial, Delia and her parents travel to Bucharest from the countryside. We witness the final leg of their car journey into the capital and then we stick with Delia as she gets her make-up done and films take after take of the inane advertisement. Arguing with her parents between takes about what to do with the car (they want to sell it in order to start a hotel business, whereas she wants to keep it do drive around with her friends) the girl is forced to repeat for the cameras (and with increasing irony) that she is the titular “luckiest, happiest girl in the world”.



What we see is a protracted (fantastically acted) family feud, as she argues with her mother, then her father, then the pair of them and so on, until the day is ending, the light is fading and the poor, exasperated commercial director is left trying desperately to coax an adequate performance out of her. Meanwhile, a representative of the drinks company takes exception to every detail of the ad, from the girls speaking, to the amount of juice she drinks in a single take, to the amount of water sprayed onto the bottle by the prop man in order to make it look refreshing (at one point he suggests adding cola to the bottle to make it look better on film). These two parts of the film combine to give us something which is equal parts a poignant (and often quietly funny) family drama about a grumpy modern teenager and her old fashioned parents and a detailed and fascinating insight into the world of making commercials (and by extension filmmaking in general), with every aspect of that world shown in great detail. Apparently Jude was himself a director of commercials and it is clear he knows that world inside and out.

There are so many interesting strands in this film that it is almost impossible to keep track of them all. It is an observational comedy about the gap between generations. It’s also a story about the clash between the new capitalist ideology which prizes personal possessions and consumption over the common good represented by the parents who remember the communist years more vividly and see a comfortable lifestyle as more appealing than a shiny car. You could read it as simply a story of country attitudes coming to the big city, or of the cruelty of the media industry using people and treating them badly (as the commercial makers constantly talk about Delia's physical imperfections whilst she is within earshot).



It is also a film which provoked an incredibly visceral response from me whilst I sat watching it. I felt like I wanted to shout at the girl for being so selfish and giving her folks such a hard time. I wanted her dad to be able to get her signature and sell the car before the day’s conclusion. At times I was gripped with suspense uncommon in this sort of quiet, low-key film as I genuinely worried about what decision the girl would make. But the biggest strength of all is that I wasn’t led to feel that way particularly (or at least I don’t feel as though I was, which is just as good). I can just as easily imagine people wanting the girl to keep her car and I can see people thinking badly of her parents for pushing her into selling it for them (and at one point threatening to disown her entirely and leave the city without her - which come to think of it does sound unreasonable).

Basically, ‘The Happiest Girl in the World’ is one of the most remarkable and surprising films of the last year and I will be very, very surprised if it isn’t in my top ten come January 2011. Go and see it if you can find it playing somewhere.

'The Happiest Girl in the World' is rated '15' by the BBFC and is out today (28th May 2010) in the UK in selected cinemas nationwide (or probably just in London). Jon and I talked about it in the last podcast too!

Retrospective Review: 'Punch-Drunk Love'

Here is the first in a planned series of retrospective reviews of some of favourite movies. I have chosen to start this series with a look at a movie which is depicted in this blog's heading and which I have frequently mentioned in my posts:



‘Punch-Drunk Love’ (2002) is the fourth feature film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and stars Adam Sandler, who became a major box-office draw in the latter half of the 1990’s with broad and brash man-child comedies like ‘The Waterboy’ (1998) and ‘Big Daddy’ (1999). But it should come as no surprise that ‘Punch-Drunk Love’ isn’t a slapstick comedy farce, however, as Anderson had come to prominence with such bold and unusual films as ‘Boogie Nights’ (1997) and ‘Magnolia’ (1999) and would go on to make the dark, satirical oil-epic ‘There Will Be Blood’ (2007), which was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar at the 80th Academy Awards and also earned Anderson a nomination for directing (although it was defeated in both categories by the Coen brothers’ ‘No Country For Old Men’).

‘Punch-Drunk Love’ is not an easy film to summarise, although the surface level “plot” is admittedly rather slender. Barry Egan (Sandler) is a nervous and isolated man who is unable to express himself emotionally, a fact which leads to sudden fits of violent rage (a typical Sandler archetype, though played much darker here). Barry soon meets Lena (Emily Watson) and they share a mutual attraction, but Barry feels uncomfortable talking to women and avoids the situation. To confront this issue Barry takes the step of calling a sex hotline, however this leads the hotline’s supervisor (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) to attempt to blackmail Barry, with violent repercussions for everyone involved. Against this fraught backdrop Barry and Lena begin a romance. Explaining the story like this will give you some idea of what happens, but very little idea what the film is about.



Whilst Todd McCarthy of Variety found the film to be “marked by audacious strokes of directorial bravado” and Roger Ebert found it “exhilarating”, some critics were less enthusiastic when the film was released, with Lawrence Toppman of the Charlotte Observer expressing the belief that “‘Punch-Drunk Love’ buries a terrific performance by Adam Sandler under a heap of faux cleverness, meaningless symbolism and irritating mannerisms.” The accusations of “meaningless symbolism” and “faux cleverness” are probably directed at the way Anderson’s film uses symbols and visual motifs to represent feelings and themes. For example, early on in the film Barry witnesses a massive, unexplained, unrealistic (and never again referenced) car crash, which is immediately followed by a taxi cab leaving a harmonium on the sidewalk. For me, the car crash represents Barry’s heightened anxiety at the outside world, which he is afraid of and unable to relate to, and the harmonium becomes a method of catharsis during the film's most stressful moments, representing beauty and a reason to keep on. These moments serve to make ‘Punch-Drunk Love’ a genuinely cinematic experience with Anderson painting on a large canvas, covering the emotional rather than the literal.

The real triumph of ‘Punch-Drunk Love’ is that the viewer is forced to experience Barry’s emotional state and to see situations through his eyes. For example, in an early scene Barry attends a gathering with his seven sisters in which he loses the plot and completely destroys a glass patio door. Nothing the sisters say during this sequence is malicious or intended to rile Barry at all, in fact his sisters can’t understand why he acts the way he does towards them. However, the scene is cleverly devised so that the viewer experiences what they are saying the way Barry does: the sisters are loud and their voices overlap as they tell stories about his childhood which they think are amusing and endearing but which he interprets as a personal attack. When he destroys the glass door it is without question a disturbing, seemingly unprovoked overreaction, but one which we are made to understand and empathise with due to the mounting anxiety and hysteria created by the mood to the sequence.



The experience of watching ‘Punch-Drunk Love’ is visceral, emotional and often horribly tense, thanks in no small part to (frequent Anderson collaborator) Jon Brion, whose excellent score plays a huge part in creating the film’s atmosphere which can change quickly from terrified anxiety to pure elation, often within moments. Likewise the cinematography of Robert Elswit (who has worked on every film of Anderson’s since 1996’s ‘Hard Eight’) is breathtaking. The film’s use of colour is stunning with a muted blue colour palette, which contrasts brilliantly with some of the later scenes which display a much more intense, bright and sharply defined use of colour. These elements compliment the stunning multi-coloured visual interludes designed by the late Jeremy Blake, which feel as though they are being painted by Jon Brion’s music. All these elements complement each other so wonderfully that ‘Punch-Drunk Love’ is perhaps the most perfect movie yet by a director who seems destined to be hailed as an American master.