The premiere of a new movie Paul Thomas Anderson It is quite an event for any lover of the seventh art. To his credit there are authentic gems such as ‘Magnolia’, ‘Pozos de ambición’ or ‘El thread invisible’, so it is logical to expect a lot from anything that bears his signature.
With ‘Licorice Pizza’ he has achieved some of the best reviews of his filmography and three Oscar nominations as important as those for best film, best direction and best original screenplay, but the most curious thing is that later perhaps What shines the most in the show is the exceptional work of newcomers Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman.
Traveling back to the 70’s
It is not the first time that Anderson places one of his films during the 70’s, a time when he himself was a child, often with a nostalgic touch but without letting that cannibalize the proposal. It is as if he is not so much interested in disconnecting from reality as playing with it, molding it to extract what he requires from it and offer an idealized vision to some extent.
Here that is something that has two faces. On the one hand, the first hour of ‘Licorice Pizza’ is a delightin which everything revolves around the fascination that Alana arouses in Gary, with the first going through a moment in her life in which she has to take the bull by the horns and see how far she can go, while the second is a still a teenager who lets himself be carried away by his dreams, no matter what bumps he may encounter along the way.
Anderson embroiders the dynamic that arises between the two, relying for this on the freshness that Haim and Hoffman transmit to their respective characters, but also on the chemistry they share, which leads us to believe that they end up being a couple, great friends. or both. The chemistry between Haim and Hoffman is something almost supernatural.
That first hour focuses almost exclusively on it, bringing them dangerously close so that they end up trying to fly (up to a point) alone. Gary’s drive seems to have a clear ceiling, as evidenced by his television experience, while Alana ends up awakening the more practical side of her to go in the direction you think you should and deserve.
The ballast of the anecdotal
Then a bifurcation arises that does not sit too well with ‘Licorice Pizza’, a film in which until then the moments had been more important than the whole, but it is as if Anderson allowed himself to be seduced by certain real anecdotes to give the film an episodic component that was much less stimulating than what we had seen until then. Before there was a certain tendency to it, but integrating it with much greater fortune in the story.
It is also in that phase of the film where he gives the film a more cinephile touch and there may be little to reproach him for purely technically, but emotionally it is another matter. I think especially in the segment in which they appear Sean Penn and Tom Waitsthe weakest link in the entire function.
‘Licorice Pizza’ manages to come back after that, but maintains that same tendency for isolated experiences to focus narrative attention for the next few minutes. In this way, the truth conveyed by the relationship between its two protagonists is diluted in part to the benefit of the eccentric with that excessive Bradley Cooper or in the only part of the entire performance in which Anderson puts his feet on the ground with the politician played by benny safdie.
They continue to be vital experiences for both to finish clarifying their path, always paying attention that they do not turn out to be heavy, being essential for this the assembly work of Andy Jurgensenand with a sensational technical finish so that one feels transported to another era at all times.
The ballast is that until then one was enchanted with a unique and special love story in which everything seduced you to the point of never wanting to separate yourself from its two protagonists, but there that effect is lost. ‘Licorice Pizza’ is a film in which there is a lot of running, but halfway through the film it is as if taking a break to do something else. And less interesting.
In short
‘Licorice Pizza’ remains below the best films of its director. A pity because initially it did aim to be among his major works, but then he bets on going in another direction and loses what made it really special. It is not that it sinks -even the part with Penn and Wait, the worst of the show, has its little things-, but it does get lost a bit along the way despite the fact that Anderson seems to be controlling the situation in detail since the start. scene at all times.