Los Angeles, 1970. A private detective normally surrounded by a cloud of marijuana, Doc Sportello gets an unexpected visit from his former girlfriend, Shasta. Now the mistress of a rich businessman, she’s worried about his wife and her lover, who plan to get rid of him. Sportello takes on the case, but then Shasta and the businessman disappear, a bodyguard is murdered, the police and the FBI get involved and a drug cartel makes things much more complicated…

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Over the years Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies have gained complexity but lost coherency. Since the buzzy Punch-Drunk Love, the director of Boogie Nights and Magnolia has shifted spectacularly to darker fare like There Will Be Blood and The Master, which showed his fascinating desire to push the boundaries of cinematic narrative. Despite its apparent lightness, this adaptation of the novel by Thomas Pynchon continues this trend. It is a dizzying, 2½-hour trip that embroils both the audience and the protagonist in a freaky and absurd investigation. Inherent Vice is yet another unclassifiable, arrogant and dangerous object, conceived to reach a part of the brain that is usually spared by Hollywood. Costarring with Joaquin Phoenix is new arrival Katherine Waterston, whose her pout and devastating charm are like a lighthouse in the heady fog that surrounds the audience.