[FILM]
LICORICE PIZZA
Here: Love on the run — Gary (Cooper Hoffman) and Alana (Alana Haim). Above: Sean Penn plays an ageing movie star.
★★★★★
DIRECTOR Paul Thomas Anderson
CAST Cooper Hoffman, Alana Haim, Bradley Cooper, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Benny Safdie
OUT 1 JANUARY CERT TBC / 133 MINS
PLOT 1973, San Fernando Valley, California. While waiting to get his high-school photo taken, 15-year-old budding actor Gary Valentine (Hoffman) asks 25-year-old photographer’s assistant Alana Kane (Haim) on a date — sparking a fiery friendship, business partnership, and possible romance.
“YOU’RE A VERY powerful feeling,” one character tells another towards the end of Licorice Pizza. It’s a moment which feels like the film is describing itself. Paul Thomas Anderson’s ninth film is shaggy and shambolic but utterly lovable, equally as interested in mood and flavour as story and narrative. It’s a coming-of-age tale sketched with the kind of nostalgia that manifests as memories often do: messy and seemingly unformed, yet somehow deeply, ineffably profound, down to your bones.