REVIEW / FILM REVIEW – Paul Thomas Anderson is back with “Licorice Pizza”. After the poisoned love of “Phantom Thread”, the filmmaker unveils a lighter story, but just as exciting.
Licorice Pizza : Paul Thomas Anderson, drunk with love
Paul Thomas Anderson’s cinema is always strewn with moments of grace, silent and heartwarming outpourings of feelings. First there is the benevolent gaze experienced high roller Philip Baker Hall casts on fiery Gwyneth Paltrow and John C. Reilly in Hard eight. There is also the final reunion and harmony of Boogie Nights, but also the tears that Tom Cruise finally manages to shed near his dying father Jason Robards in Magnolia. More recently, there was that peaceful stroll on the beach between Katherine Waterston and Joaquin Phoenix after the smoky investigation ofInherent Vice, or the meeting at the restaurant between the demanding couturier Daniel Day-Lewis and his muse Vicky Krieps in Phantom Thread.
Memorable passages, even unforgettable, which often come to mop up the pain and the confusion of the films in which they are part. Pain and disorder are always present in Licorice Pizza, but at no time did they succeed in braking energy and love of the new feature film by the filmmaker.
Licorice Pizza begins in a college, the day of the class photos. Gary (Cooper Hoffman), a charming 15-year-old with an incredible patter, notices Alana (Alana Haim), a 25-year-old who offers the students a comb and mirror before they pass the lens. Without hesitation, he approaches her and invites her to dinner that evening. She accepts. From this first exchange will be born a romance, a friendship, a partnership, jealousy, escapes and frantic races towards each other …
Together and nothing else
During the introductory sequence shot, Paul Thomas Anderson immediately gets the viewer used to seeing Alana and Gary together, transcribing, thanks to the talent of his two fabulous actors, the joy of discovery, the excitement of flirtation but also hesitation. The age difference frightens the young woman, which does not prevent her from committing several eminently romantic gestures. Is there any greater proof of love than running through a city trying to catch up with a police car that picked up your loved one falsely accused of murder? But above all, is there a greater proof of love than to agree to go into the business of waterbed ?
In addition to multiplying the hilarious situations where he manhandles his characters as he did with Doc Sportello in Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson is especially multiplying the signs that Alana and Gary are made for each other, despite their many attempts to convince themselves otherwise. So much so that as soon as they try to distance themselves, something intentionally rings wrong.
This is especially felt when external elements interfere with their story, starting with the appearances of Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper. The first embodies a megalomaniac version of William Holden stuck in Breezy, reciting his warlike lines of I’m coming back from hell and The Bridge over the River Kwai to flatter his ego. The second is unleashed in the skin of producer Jon Peters, hairdresser and lover of Barbra Streisand ready to explode anytime. However, a pity that the superb shot of the trailer in which he exults a knee on the ground in a gas station only appears during the final credits.
A mythological setting
Everything seems easy for Paul Thomas Anderson and his actors in Licorice Pizza. The story is fluid, the heaviness of his previous films no longer exists and the fun of the two main actors does not seem to be feigned. Cooper Hoffman has the same casual, laughing gaze as his father Philip Seymour Hoffman. Nevertheless, the shadow of the late father never crushes his son’s performance. As for Alana Haim, she tours accompanied by her sisters Este and Danielle with whom she forms a group, as well as their parents. Conditions that offer spontaneous, natural family sequences that are therefore even more striking and endearing.
As their races towards each other and the repetition of them signify, the romance between Alana and Gary has a mythological character – in a setting which is equally so in the cinema – sinceshe is inevitable. Set in 1973, four years after the intrigues of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood and Model Shop, Licorice Pizza like these two feature films takes the form of a Californian trip where disillusion is not …
