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"To the human heart!" The heroine (Gena Rowlands) is a museum curator, wounded but hopeful, tipsily denouncing Hollywood's romantic lies. "There's no Charles Boyer in my life," but there is the shaggy hothead (Seymour Cassel) who parks cars by day and gets thrown out of bars by night. Seized by an urge, he hops a plane to Los Angeles and embarks on a courtship so pugnacious he drives a pickup on the sidewalk after his reluctant beloved. "O brawling love," some adjustment required for the Seventies: "I think about you so much, I forget to go to the bathroom!" Chaos sad and happy, a thin line between harrowing abrasion and screwball lark, in other words the John Cassavetes whirlwind. Bulky dark glasses make for a handy shield during a woman's perilous outings, such as the blind date with the widower (Val Avery) whose garrulous affability promptly gives way to volcanic neediness. One parking-lot scuffle later and she's having hot dogs with the mook who won't take no for an answer, "not the face I dreamed of." Flickers of The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca fill the screen, neon reflections zip across a windshield as a Strauss waltz swells. "La plus belle escroquerie du monde," says Godard of cinema, Timothy Carey as a grungy Bowery specter has his own definition, "a buncha lonely people goin' in, lookin' up." Rough vistas, jagged rhythms, the seediness and the noise that turn breathtakingly beautiful when Rowlands sings "I Love You Truly" on the staircase to Cassel, who, with mustache trimmed and ponytail undone, beholds a star. A comedy in close-up, pace Chaplin, a guffaw at the altar dissipating to the celebratory artifice of home movies. "If you think of yourself as funny, you become tragic." Anderson in Punch-Drunk Love is attuned to its volatile music. With Katherine Cassavetes, Elizabeth Deering, Elsie Ames, Lady Rowlands, Judith Anna Roberts, and David Rowlands.
--- Fernando F. Croce |