‘Licorice Pizza’: Head over heels for Alana Haim in the shaggiest of ’70s Southern California tales
By Tom Meek Thursday, December 23, 2021
Fans of Paul Thomas Anderson’s early, quirky works – “Boogie Nights” (1997) and “Magnolia” (1999) – will delight in his latest. That’s not to say that “There Will Be Blood” (2007), “Phantom Thread” (2017) and “Inherent Vice” (2014) are not insignificant films, because they are; it’s just there’s a dark, cheeky breeziness to those earlier efforts and a style and a tone that propels “Licorice Pizza” from the first frame. The opening scene homes in on 15-year-old Gary (Cooper Hoffman, son of frequent Anderson collaborator Phillip Seymour Hoffman’) loquaciously prattling away to a young woman named Alana (Alana Haim), who’s clearly older (in her 20s). It’s a long, well-choreographed tracking shot that takes us from the long paths of a verdant courtyard to the innards of a school’s gym, where Gary is to get his high school photo. Gary, we learn, is a child actor of some notoriety but on the cusp of aging out, an epiphany that doesn’t put a damper on so much as free up an abundance of other ambitious ideas, including dating Alana. “I met the girl I’m going to marry one day,” he tells a friend. Alana, surprisingly, agrees to a date at a local steakhouse (the infamous Tail o’ the Cock) and later chaperones Gary to a hit TV show reunion in New York City, where one of Gary’s fellow child stars swoops in on her.
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The time is 1950s London, where haut fashion is defined by designers who create dresses and gowns for wealthy clients. Think of it as going to Versace or Wang’s house to get a gown tailor-made by the name-brander themselves. One such couturier, Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis) is so fastidious and OCD that when we meet him, he’s daintily snipping every protruding nose hair before tucking his button-down into his pants with painfully diligent care, so as to not cause an unseemly fold or crease. Appearance and posture is everything. Then it’s on to breakfast in a sunny anteroom of Woodcock’s stately London townhouse, where the dressmaker sips tea gingerly and nibbles on pastries as he goes about his sketches. With him are his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) and latest conquest (Camilla Rutherford) – a much younger woman treated as a hanger-on who’s on the way out. When the wholesome ingenue clangs her silverware once too much for Reynolds’ concentration and he chides her for the unconscionable and incessant interruptions, she, knowing full well of her fate and tired of being ignored, raises her voice. Reynolds barely looks across the table and, with cold, restrained calm, says, “I cannot begin my day with a confrontation.” This is a cue to his loyal sis to clean up his romantic mess and allow him to get on with business.
For What it's Worth 