Know it to shine in society if ever this movie is mentioned, a “licorice pizza” (literal translation: “liquorice pizza”) is a metaphor for vinyl records. One of the indications that the film is an ode to the 70s, and more precisely to the year 1973, that of the first oil shock, and of a gasoline shortage in California which also gives rise to several funny scenes .
As in several other Paul Thomas Anderson films, the story takes place in the San Fernando Valley, northwest of Los Angeles. The filmmaker, born in 1970, obviously put a lot of his own childhood memories into the film: “Let’s say I put in as many as I could, although some of the details are different. I didn’t open a waterbed store, I didn’t have a pinball machine, but this is the neighborhood I am in. grew up. I also fell in love with hundreds of girls older than me, because I wanted to be cool, and be around them. So the details might be a little different, but the background is the same: little scams, and a kind of emotional maturity. “
This story is therefore that of Gary Valentine, a mature teenager for his age, who plays in some TV shows, and who on the day of the high school class photo falls in love with Alana Kane, older than him, who finished high school and would like to become a photographer. And at the end of “coming of age”, these works recounting the transition of a character from childhood to adulthood, Paul Thomas Anderson prefers to define his film as a “complicated love story” which will take its protagonists in different memorable moments specific to the time.
As often with Paul Thomas Anderson, the staging is virtuoso, the soundtrack suitable, and the rhythm of the film allows to set the atmosphere and the characters well. The two main actors, yet beginners, are impressive. Alana Haim had so far only been known in the United States as a member of the pop-rock group of the same name, Haim, made up of three Jewish sisters. (who all play in the film), and Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anderson’s favorite actor who died in 2014, had never acted in the movies. He is perfect, with expressions from his father.
Two beginner actors, therefore, but who imposed themselves on Paul Thomas Anderson as obvious: “If you had been in the room with me and them, when they first read the lines, you too would have thought it was excellent! These are the kinds of things that appear in front of you right away. As obvious. The only thing I could give them is some hints on how to approach the characters, and some basic but essential advice: be in good shape and live the project to the fullest physically for 65 days. “
And if the director himself admits having put in the film his friends, the children of his friends and the friends of his children in a kind of happy improvised bazaar, we still find several experienced actors, including Sean Penn, Tom Waits, and especially Bradley Cooper irresistible in Jon Peters, the ex-lover and hairdresser of Barbra Streisand …