Review: The Sweet Taste of ‘Licorice Pizza’
“You’re never gonna remember me.”
“I’m never gonna forget you. Just like you’ll never forget me.”
It’s 1973 in the San Fernando Valley and things are about to change. Water beds are touted as the greatest invention in sleep technology since the inner spring. Joel Wachs is gearing up for a mayoral campaign promising to stamp out corruption. Pontiacs and Chevys line the block of the local gas station in an effort to beat the national oil shortage. But more importantly, it’s when Gary Valentine meets Alana Kane, and things…things are about to change.
Gary (Cooper Hoffman) is fifteen. Though acne dots his face and he’s but a sophomore in high school, he’ll be the first to persuade you with his showman-like demeanor that he is far more capable and mature than his age lets on. Alana (Alana Haim) is twenty-five. She works for a professional year book photo agency, and while her age would suggest passage into adulthood, her anger and impulsive behavior prove otherwise.
They meet while Alana is on the job, Gary attending school. Love at first sight brings him to her, and naturally, Gary’s charm lowers Alana’s initial apprehension. He floats his recent successes as a child star in the hopes of winning her over, but in the end it’s his gusto that catches Alana’s eye. They are not fated to be together nor are they the typical duo — their age difference indicates as such — but a mutual attraction emerges from their differences. Despite her better judgement, Alana concedes to hangout with Gary, hoping to find out if this sure-footed teenager who touts up-and-coming status is the real deal. After all, when change is swirling about the Valley, why not jump at the opportunity to participate?
Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest event film Licorice Pizza is neatly focused on these two, and though Gary and Alana swap flirtations, touching knees and serving longing stares, PTA never consecrates a true affair, knowing where to draw the line when it comes to unsavory relationships. Rather, he centers his interest on their dealings with maturity, making both Gary and Alana equals in their flawed relationship to it.
Alana is someone who wants to be everything but grown up, doing anything she can to avoid her present reality. She lives under the roof of her disappointed parents, played by Alana Haim’s real parents Mordechai and Donna, and in the shadow of her comparably more successful sisters, played by Alana Haim’s real life sisters and band mates Danielle and Este. Her behavior is often irrational and fevered, a byproduct of her own immaturity, failure to adapt to adulthood, and frustration with where she is in life. Hanging out with Gary and his friends offer a reprieve from her current circumstances, but it's also a double edge sword, ultimately preventing her from being mature in the truest sense.
Conversely, Gary wants to be seen as just that, though he is incapable of filling the shoes to do so. He’ll co-star in movies, start a pinball arcade business, and converse with adults three times his age, but once pressure is applied — say kicking out an adult from his place of business — he folds. His showman like persona is only a veneer for someone who isn’t mature at all. Taken together, Gary and Alana form a complement: he’s fifteen acting twenty-five, and she’s twenty-five acting fifteen. Their character flaws are highlighted by their proximity to one another, making their follies ripe for PTA to assess what it means to quite literally come of age.
Their time together is made up of episodic happenings within the San Fernando Valley, a reoccurring locale in PTA’s films. These episodes see Gary and Alana come in and out of the orbits of various 1970s celebrity icons and historical events, and help construct Licorice Pizza’s cultural pastiche. Gary is initially a child star, shown participating in the press tour for ‘Under One Roof’ with an aging Lucille Doolittle (a stand in for Lucille Ball who starred similarly in Yours, Mine, and Ours). He eventually pivots to selling waterbeds in an effort to corner the next big thing, and while slinging these fad items, they come across a very horny and verbally aggressive Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper) who swears he will kill them if they “fuck up his house” when installing a water bed. During a stint of jealously, Alana courts the gaze of a much older Jack Holden, another celebrity stand in, this time for William Holden played by Sean Penn, in an effort to win back the affections of Gary. And after a moment of realization, and to seem like she’s all grown up, Alana volunteers for the mayoral campaign of LA city councilman Joel Wachs (Benny Safdie).
These moments primarily serve as vehicles for the hangout and hijinks that plot PTA’s script, but they also provide a historical context to which the film is set. The Valley is a place where things feel simpler, but after looking past the pastel nostalgia, audiences may realize that things were fraying around the edges. Celebrities were washing up. Progressive agendas of a closeted gay man were not to the public’s taste. Oil was about to run dry. The confluence of change was taking place all around the San Fernando Valley, but it was irrelevant to Gary and Alana. They were young and with someone who truly mattered, and at this time and place, that’s all they needed.
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