Paul Thomas Anderson‘s ‘Licorice Pizza‘ is the second favorite in the race for the Academy Award for Best Picture of 2021. With a little luck, it might even win the big prize, as it is a much friendlier and more accessible movie than his competitors. In addition, it has the advantage of being a kind of ‘home movie’ of today’s Hollywood, starring a few well-known stars in supporting roles and even in cameo roles, while the story takes place in the familiar hills of Southern California. It’s not a masterpiece, it’s just a feel-good movie, a travel in time to the America of 1973, a love story twisted enough to generate debates, but so chaste that it passes without problems any censorship. However, its main quality is the interpretation of the main roles by two debuting actors, which gives originality and freshness to the whole film. The two are newcomers but not anonymous names. Alana Haim is a well-known singer together with her sisters (who also appear in the film as … her sisters), and Cooper Hoffman is the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, and I can only hope that reincarnations do happen and that I witnessed in this film the beginning of one of them. As for the title of the movie, Licorice Pizza seems to mean a lot to that half of the universe that lived in California in the ’70s (the name of a network of music record stores), although it means nothing (and remains unexplained) to the other half.
The year is 1973. Boy meets Girl. Gary is 15 years old and looks a few years older. Alana is 25 years old (or maybe 28) and looks a few years younger. Relationships between very young boys and older women are problematic in life and on screen, morally but also legally as long as the boys are minors. A few weeks ago I saw the French film ‘Mourir d’aimer‘ made 50 years ago, a similar story, based on a true case in France, which ends tragically. Since then, the law has not changed much, and moral judgments have probably hardened. Paul Thomas Anderson, who also wrote the screenplay, mitigates the negative impact in two ways. First of all, the love story between Gary and Alana is perfectly chaste. After the relationship begins with an almost conventional date, the characters come to the conclusion that ‘they are not a couple’ and spend the rest of the film exploring other options and making each other permanently jealous. Secondly, Gary seems to be not only more mature psychologically and intellectually than his age, but also more mature than Alana. The boy, who was a child star in a television show broadcast all over America, is also a brilliant entrepreneur in a country where minors cannot drive cars, travel alone or have a beer, but can open a business and hire employees. If ‘Licorice Pizza‘ is a coming-to-age movie as it has sometimes been categorized, it is more about the coming-to-age of Alana, who at the age of 25 still lives with her parents (and two sisters, even older than her), does not have a stable profession, and is naive and emotionally insecure.
The main quality of ‘Licorice Pizza‘ is, in my opinion, the way it reconstructs the period and the place where the story takes place. Cinematography uses lenses and filters specific to those years, so the film looks like it was filmed in the ’70s. The characters in the movie are 15 and 25 years old. In 1973 I was 20 years old, but I lived completely on a different meridian, geographically and politically, than California. So I recognize the generation, I recognize the music (the soundtrack is exceptional), and I can only envy the heroes for the freedom they enjoyed. The details of the setting and the ambiance create an immersive feeling, we are transported with the characters in the year of the outbreak of the Watergate case and of the first energy crisis, with long lines at gas stations. Many scenes combine humor with fantasy, plus a dose of self-irony that Hollywood loves to introduce looking back at its own stars in the past, embodied by present stars (Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper among them have the most screen time in picturesque roles). All this is a pleasant amalgam, which will not shake the foundations of the film industry but will neither make most of those who will spend the two hours and a quarter of its viewing consider it a waste of time.
Ah, yes, there are rumors that there are talks about a sequel. I hope the rumors are false. Such a combination works well, as long as it works well, only once.