Licorice Pizzza

 Gary Valentine is a hustler, a dangerous mix of both teenage and adult confidence, two slightly different qualities that Gary utilises to tear his way through Los Angeles’ San Fernando valley on a one man small business crusade. In a time (the tumultuous mid 1970’s) before home videogame systems or personal computers, Gary channels his boredom into an acting career, a waterbed business, an arcade palace, a romantic pursuit of a woman at least 10 years his senior. The valley he’s tearing through is of course the home of one Paul Thomas Anderson, who’s new film Licorice Pizza stars Cooper Hoffman as the young force of nature.  He is in many ways a classic Anderson protagonist, a relentless con-man, avatar of American capitalism, although at his age he’s not menacing as much as just a menace.

Of all Gary’s escapades, it’s that strange romantic pursuit that forms the backbone of this particularly shaggy movie, more a series of memories than anything else. Gary meets and immediately begins wooing Alana Kane (Alana Hiam) who’s working with the company taking his high school pictures and almost right away its clear they each fill a strange need of the other. Gary’s energy and momentum clash with the stalling pace of the world around him, a world in the middle of an oil crisis is no problem to a kid who can’t drive yet, and his whirlwind of a career (an absurd thing for a 15 year old to have) is just the kind of escapism the flatlining Alana is looking for. This kid might have enough juice for the two of them.      

If Gary is the movies heart, Alana is the real point of interest, Andersons muse in all senses. She says she’s 25 but is probably closer to 30, and reaching a crisis point. No long term career, no plans to move out of her parents house, no earthly idea what she wants from life, especially from men. Like Gary she bounces from one half formed idea (job/relationship/social group) to the next, but whereas he approaches the unknown as a fertile land destined for him to conquer, she is perpetually unsure and unfulfilled, knowing deep down that whatever brief validation she’s getting is ultimately empty, but needing to chase it in lieu of anything more concrete.

She’s arguably worst with romance, mostly because the men populating her world are by and large predatory creeps who barely consider her as a present figure, yet alone a complex one. Early on she’s groped by her photographer boss, later she’s totally ignored by semi-fictional movie star Jack Holden (Sean Penn), a man more interested in conversing with his own past than the woman next to him, later still she misreads advances from her politician boss Joel (Bennie Safdie) and winds up being embarrassingly used as a chauffeur/cover story for his secret boyfriend. Alana launches herself into the vicinity of these men for lack of a better idea about the type of relationship she actually wants, and doubts over whether she could ever find it, opting to take any kind of attention she can get, wherever she can get it, and turning a blind eye to the toxicity that comes with it. None of this makes her happy ultimately, which keeps her wheeling back around to Gary.

The relationship, if it ever becomes a real one, wont work and Alana probably knows that, but the affection Gary has for her is sweet and genuine and isn’t coming from anywhere else in her life so she keeps him around and indulges him a little, while trying not to admit that she needs his company more than the other way round at this point. He’s a rising star and she cant get off the ground. While there’s a lot less tension in this dynamic than most Anderson films, there is something to the beguiling nature of the central pairing, an uncertainty that becomes charged potential energy. Its messy and confusing in the way life often is.

As Gary and Alana run and stumble and run (there’s so much running in this) their way through a series of to-crazy-to-be-made-up shenanigans, Andersons camera is as assured as ever, capturing his hometown with a nostalgic warmth and care that’s so pretty you often forget to wonder what the point of any given scene is, or if it matters that there is one. This is a filmmaker very much on home turf, not only is the setting familiar to him, so is much of the cast. Friends and family and children of friends and his own children all have roles, and most of the plot is lifted from the not so tall tales of his long-time friend Garry Goetzman. If there is an overarching critique of the film it’s the sense that for the first time in a while, Anderson’s not really spreading his wings much. There Will be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice, Magnolia, most of PTA’s work, for better or worse, has a real sense of self imposed importance, of a grand statement, a major American picture, while Licorice Pizza mostly feels like a doodle, not dumb or throw away but, largely inconsequential. Mabey that’s fine.       

A movie such as this, with no clear direction and more of  a hangout vibe, relies on minor set pieces to keep that vibe going, a cameo performance here (hello Bradley Cooper, coming in scorching hot for a deranged couple of scenes), an inspired needle drop there (McCartney and Wing’s Let Me Roll It is a standout), a few great gags, Licorice Pizza has all these and more, including a sequence involving a moving truck that’s as thrilling as any action scene this year. Unfortunately the vibe can be killed just as easily by a bum note, and a repeated joke involving a goofy restaurant owner brings the films momentum to a screeching halt, at least for some viewers. Andersons taste, like anyone’s, is not always perfect.

Yet for all the films somewhat weightless, isolated moments (most of which work, some don’t), the maybe/maybe-not couple at its centre really does stick in my mind, particularly Alana. There’s an honesty and intelligent vulnerability in the way Anderson’s writing and Hiam’s performance render this woman who has very much not figured her shit out yet, that strikes me as far more identifiable than, for example, the similarly conceived protagonist of Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World. The emotional liminal space between Gary’s overeager adolescent and Alana’s indecisive, moody, late blooming 20-something is a place most of us have found ourselves in at one time or another. Licorice Pizza encourages us to keep running, even if right now we’re just running in place.