Licorice Pizza (2022) - Paul Thomas Anderson’s coming-of-age kick-starts 2022 with a nostalgic bang
Credit: allocine.fr
In the summer of 1973, a group of teenagers start a waterbed business. It quickly picks up, fuelled by their leader’s sheer energy (at times bordering on arrogance), the enthusiasm of his workers, and the immutable belief, in the sweltering sun, that anything is possible. Such is the joyous and optimistic tone of Licorice Pizza, the coming-of-age film of 2022 that asserts with the upmost conviction that there are no barriers to your dreams if you just put your mind to it.
Straight out of the mind of Paul Thomas Anderson, who previously gave us the sultry and intense likes of There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread, Licorice Pizza belongs to a special group of feel-good films that succeed in making those who weren’t even born during the age of Bowie nostalgic about it. In an era where five years of experience is required for an entry-level job and warnings not to go out with strangers resonate across social media, Licorice Pizza is a breath of fresh air, a period rife with opportunities and experiences, in which a budding actress can audition for a feature film within days of signing on with an agency and a pimpled, albeit brilliant, fifteen year old can set up various businesses without being laughed at in his face. This fifteen year old is Gary Valentine, played by the extraordinary newcomer Cooper Hoffman (the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose career as a child actor is slowly coming to an end and who seeks the next stage of his life. Skipping teenage activities, Gary swiftly moves onto the adult square, hiring models to pose semi-naked on his waterbeds and becoming attracted to sullen twenty five year old Alana Kane (an equally extraordinary Alana Haim, of the band HAIM). The two meet during a yearbook photo session at Gary’s high school, where Alana is assisting the photographer by walking down the line of students asking if they want a mirror. She is amused at Gary’s advances, then all at once curious, flattered and depressed when she realises he is serious. The two start to spend time with each other: Alana chaperones Gary to a New York TV special, one of his final on stage performances, and promptly holds hands – a sure sign of undying love for Gary – with his co-star, Lance (Booksmart’s Skyler Gisondo), kick-starting a series of back and forths, misunderstandings and jealousies that complicate and blur their relationship without nevertheless ever weakening its true core.
Credit: allocine.fr
Fun and light-hearted, Licorice Pizza comes across as a collage of events rather than a clear linear storyline: the summer stretches far out for its two protagonists, who jump from waterbeds to acting to politics to pinball games. Accompanying them are a variety of strange cameos that almost feel like vague hallucinatory trips: Tom Waits convinces Sean Penn’s drunk, flirtatious actor to ride a motorcycle through fire; Bradley Cooper, as hairdresser and producer Jon Peters, boyfriend of Barbra Streisand (“sand, like the ocean”), calmly threatens to murder Gary’s younger brother if he gets his waterbed setup wrong. There is no immediate meaning to any of these scenes, and yet they all come together in a medley of sunny events that are simply a delight to watch, fuelled by an excellent soundtrack with the likes of Nina Simone, Bing Crosby and David Bowie (a scene featuring Life On Mars? is no doubt one of the most spine-tingling sequences of the film, much like Anderson’s self-cut trailer, which syncs up lyric and image).
Though it is a little snapshot of joy, Licorice Pizza doesn’t try to romanticise the 70s either. Maybe Gary can effortlessly start a business, but there are nevertheless subtle scenes of political issues and problematic behaviour, ranging from groping (the photographer vulgarly smacking Alana’s bum as she walks past him), shame at one’s sexuality (in which Alana acts as a beard for a political candidate’s boyfriend) to an oil crisis that culminates in a very tense van ride. Anderson is honest about the times, realistic about its highs just as much as its lows. Everything feels real about Licorice Pizza: Haim’s real-life family portraying her onscreen one; hesitant dialogue, hesitant reactions; the fact that sometimes, you fall in love with the most inconceivable person. More importantly, it doesn’t pretend to be more than it is: the tale of a formative summer, dotted with events that seem almost quotidian to its characters, but are nevertheless extraordinary. And perhaps, in the end, this is what remains from Licorice Pizza: a vague, blurry memory of something that, at the time, was truly special.