Alana, who claims unconvincingly to be twenty-five-perhaps she’s younger and wants to ward off Gary’s advances, though it’s just as likely that she’s touching thirty-is the youngest of four daughters (a personal touch from Anderson, who grew up in a household with three sisters) and is the least successful among them. One scene in particular feels sweet, ugly, dangerous and nauseating all at once, as Gary’s shivering teenage hands approach Alana’s breasts after she falls asleep comfortably next to him on a rickety waterbed, but he pulls back at the last second.īoth characters live at the precipice of horrendous judgement, but they remain wrapped up in their personal and professional fantasies (the presence of which is alluring, and the brief absence of which is immediately dispiriting). Lens flares pierce the corners of the frame whenever possibilities emerge-whether sex, romance, stardom, or one of Gary’s many get-rich-quick business opportunities, into which Alana is eventually roped-but these are soon replaced by harsh shadows which clash with the film’s upbeat Classic Rock soundtrack, creating a dissonance specific to navigating teenage boyhood and burgeoning sexuality. He paints the Valley in warm and shadowy hues on 70mm celluloid, crafting a sharp visual contrast that highlights the characters’ every physical detail, down to Gary’s hormonal zits, whilst wrapping light around them in ways that speak to their darkest and brightest dreams. It’s anchored by the aesthetic meld Anderson has perfected in recent years, between the dreamlike and the disturbing-and in this case, the innocent and the thornily intricate-and by a pair of truly stunning debut performances that bring to life two of the most fully-formed, deeply complicated Hollywood characters in recent memory.Īnderson, who also shares cinematography credit (alongside Michael Bauman), evokes much of his work with cinematographer Robert Elswit, who shot all three of Anderson’s prior San Fernando films. The story that follows is occasionally uneven, but blossoms in strange and fascinating ways. His recurring themes of living on the edge of showbusiness take shape in fifteen-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman), a middling teenage actor with some TV credits who oozes confidence in his other endeavors, including his romantic ones, and who begins pursuing twenty-something Alana Kane (Alana Haim), a photographer’s assistant who writes herself off, believing she’s well past her professional prime. After a trio of films set in the San Fernando Valley- Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love -writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson returns to the ’70s time period of the former and to his native locale, for the nostalgia-laced Licorice Pizza, after nearly 20 years away.
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