Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is named after a chain of record shops in Southern California. Though the whimsical words are neither mentioned nor explained in the film, they are meant to evoke for insiders the time, place and mood of the narrative – the early 1970s, San Fernando Valley, nostalgia.
It’s the coming-of-age story of Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman), a 15-year-old somewhat successful actor and serial entrepreneur, and Alana Kane (the musician Alana Haim), who works in a dead-end job at a nail salon. Gary asks Alana out the first time they meet. She agrees on the strict condition that it not be considered a date since she is five years older than him. This cringe-worthy age difference, especially when one of the parties is a minor, is an inexplicable choice since the story doesn’t hinge on it.
From that first non-date, the film cleverly tweaks the conventions of the boy-meets-girl genre. The linear narrative moves between many beautifully wrought worlds. Here is glamorous Hollywood – Gary in a splashy gig in New York with a Lucille Ball-like superstar and a cameo by Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters, Barbara Streisand’s partner at the time. There is the distinctly unglamorous business of Gary with Alana where they sell water-beds.
Alana joins the idealistic fund-raising campaign of a young mayoral candidate. Things move at a dizzyingly fast pace, but Alana Haim’s incredible debut performance holds everything together.
The film is nostalgic for a more optimistic world, when the distinctly middle-class Gary and Alana could charm and hustle their way into multiple plans to make money or for that matter “change the world”. Gary and Alana argue vigorously about that choice, but their many fights are treated not as heroic self-discovery but with light humor.
In a Hollywood divided between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Serious Cinema on Woke Matters, Licorice Pizza’s detached lightness feels almost like a provocation. While Alana and Gary grapple with the big questions of what they should be doing with their lives, what stays with us is the sheer delight of their madcap adventures.
