Licorice Pizza

(US / 2021 / Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)

Containing neither pizza nor licorice, Anderson’s sweetest creation yet lovingly summons the sun-drunk Southern California of his youth and builds it atop a simple premise. It is picture day, and a charismatic and entrepreneurial 15-year-old child actor, Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman), meets 25-year-old photography assistant Alana Kane (Alana Haim). Taking a chance, he asks her out to dinner and she accepts.

Though their age difference rules out the full romantic entanglements of adult courtship, Gary and Alana quickly become a unit. She helps him start his waterbed business and chaperones for his acting gigs. Hellbent on the pursuit of happiness, the young dreamers are often jubilantly running from scene to scene, even when they don’t seem to have anywhere in particular to go. Along the way, their course intersects with stand ins for a Hollywood of old. Sean Penn plays a hard drinking leading man “Jack” Holden, and Tom Waits stars as his equally lubricated director. Bradley Cooper also menaces as Jon Peters, the notorious producer and one-time boyfriend to Barbara Streisand.

It is a film devoid of sexual conquest, with a narrative that evades the chronic need for conflict. Though it may lack those sure fire tropes of moviemaking, it is a rare cinematic experience that can bring an audience within kissing distance of youthful desire and possibility.

R / 2 hrs 13 mins