Film Review — Licorice Pizza
Cooper Hoffman and Alan Haim wrestle with an awkward age gap in PT Anderson’s unlikely, offbeat, brilliant coming-of-age romance.
There is a lot of running in Licorice Pizza. Said running acts as an energetic, exhilarating recurring motif, whether its central characters are running in a comedic or bonding moment, running to find one another amid melancholy heartache, or running to post flyers for fledgeling business ventures. I’ll come back to the latter point, but Licorice Pizza sees Paul Thomas Anderson on light, exuberant form. This highly unusual, offbeat sort-of love story is equal parts joy and quirk, often laugh-out-loud hilarious, but also poignant and unexpected.
The plot follows fifteen-year-old child actor Gary (Cooper Hoffman) becoming obsessively romantically interested in school photographer’s assistant Alana (Alana Haim), who is ten years older, circa San Fernando Valley, 1973. She is amused but dismissive of his advances, insisting they can only be friends. Nonetheless, she is drawn to him. Together they collaborate on a couple of business ventures (including waterbeds and pinball machines), whilst Gary attempts to use his connections to get Alana an acting gig (in a sequence featuring Sean Penn as Jack Holden, supposedly based on real-life actor William Holden). Suffice to say, emotional complications ensue.
Reading that paragraph back, I realise how absurd it sounds. All I can say is that whilst my review may sound ridiculous, the film is not. Somehow, it manages to pull off a freewheeling, whimsical, absorbing vibe with an immersive sense of time and place. Shot on opulent 35mm, Licorice Pizza has the dreamlike quality inherent in the best films of its kind, whilst remaining an Anderson auteur piece. It is tonally similar to Punch Drunk Love and visually similar to Boogie Nights and Inherent Vice, minus the pornography and existential anxiety, respectively.
The 1970s setting allows the film a certain latitude divorced of 21st Century morality and values; most obviously concerning the familiar male teenage older woman fantasy, but also regarding the amount of dangerous driving, smoking, boozing, and even a moment of police brutality immediately shrugged off as par for the course. In one sense, it is unashamedly escapist, with nostalgic use of Bowie and Paul McCartney on the soundtrack and cinemas showing Live and Let Die. On the other hand, background political situations, such as the Opec oil crisis, mirror contemporary end-of-days anxieties.
In one truly bizarre scene, Gary and Alana sell a waterbed to coked-up hairdresser-turned-producer Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper). At once sleazy, narcissistic, menacing, and inept, Peters initiates a hilarious sequence of events that is worth the ticket price alone. I shan’t spoil it, suffice to say it involves an escalation of farcical turns that plays into the aforementioned oil crisis.
Ultimately, however, it is the strength of the leads and their undeniable chemistry that gives the film its magic spark. Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, is quite brilliant, simultaneously portraying childish naivety, wise-beyond-his-years entrepreneurial acumen, juvenile humour, and overwhelming teenage first-love. His irrepressible positivity and determination are a joy to watch. Alana Haim — of indie rock band Haim, for whom Anderson has also directed music videos — matches Hoffman’s brilliance, portraying a complex character given to short-fuse outbursts, but also implying amusement, attraction, vulnerability, and insecurity, as well as deep reservoirs of humane kindness (particularly in a sequence involving a closet homosexual). Both performances are exceptionally well-judged and nuanced, with subtle looks often conveying so much more than the dialogue.
In short, as an unlikely, awkward, but immensely loveable coming-of-age romance, I’d highly recommend grabbing a slice of Licorice Pizza.
This article was originally published at Simon Dillon Books. For more about me and my writing on Medium, please click here. For a list of my published novels and other works, please click here.