Licorice Pizza - SPOILERS!

[Drenk]

Spoiler: ShowHide

The ending reads as an "epiphany". Two lovers can't express their love and have to hide, so why should Alana lie to herself about loving Gary? They belong to each other. It's Fate. Yes, they're fucked up! But they should be fucked up together! That's the ending, and PTA seems to have lost the plot. Alana is never totally at that point before. Why does she happily run with Gary after he's arrested? No idea. PTA doesn't bother. She was scared, I guess. But she's still only flirting with the guy, trying to avoid "Fate". The ending of LP shows a new step. And PTA is with them at 100% even if they won't end up together.

There's a movie where the cycle repeats in a very, very melancholic way, and it's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: it's text. They have the tapes. They know they'll hate each other guts, and yet they're not at that point yet. So they repeat the cycle. The movie is also very self-conscious about Winston playing a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. First of all, she's Joel's memory, so a projection, and she directly adresses the fantaisies of men.

I was thinking about the religious family explaining why the sisters live at home and it still doesn't work. In the seventies, they would have been married by now. Especially if the family is very religious. Also, her father wouldn't have let Alana fly with a boy (...age definitely doesn't matter for religious patriarchs), so there's conflict there, an opportunity for Alana to make a choice even if her family isn't pleased. I've grown up in a strict, religious family and I've been infantilized: the movie isn't interested in this. My opinion is that PTA has too much respect for the Haim family, for Cooper Hoffman, to dig deeper. And his statement about only working with "family" in the future worries me.

[RudyBlatnoyd]

Wellll, agree to disagree. Guess it just goes to show how two people can take away wildly different interpretations from the same film.

I liked it a lot, especially as I've reflected on it. I have a lot of time for this new, more improvisatory-feeling period in his career.

[Drenk]

Spoiler: ShowHide

Yep, certainly. Like the age difference, the movie tries hard to bury all the sadness of the premise to me. I would barely call it an undertone. I've just read a LB review that shares this sentiment:

Goes to considerable lengths to (mostly successfully*) distract from or suppress the profound sadness and immaturity, if not also potentially undiagnosed mental illness, of a floundering adult who plays house with a teenage boy while herself living at home with her parents well into her mid-to-late twenties. On some level, while there are a few legitimately great performances here in spite of the cringe factor(s) and a few scenes that gave me an honest giggle (i.e. the female casting agent with the quivering lip and the dangling cigarette), I would have been far more interested in am honest depiction of the same. In other words, to show someone who is genuinely wrangling with the combination horror and heartache of the proposed scenario. Instead of cutesy and saccharine, it would be dangerous, uncomfortable, and... probably wouldn't sell.

[RudyBlatnoyd]

Hmm, I just don't agree that it does shy away from those things. I think they're built into the material. The way that review suggests the film could've been made would certainly be a different choice, but it would seem a more obvious and belaboured one to me. I found the movie plenty sad and unsettling beneath the surface just as it is. Appreciate many others won't agree though. Just happy that there's a movie out that it's worth arguing and disagreeing over. Hard to think of how you could have a convo of this kind about the new Spider-Man!

[Yes]

Yeah I think it's especially sad and melancholy

[Yes]

Great write up by Lauren Wilford, critic and author



A warm tribute to a kind of relationship I feel like lots of us have stuffed way in the back of a mental drawer: the ill-advised crush turned briefly, oddly, achingly mutual, transmuted not into a romantic relationship but into an ambiguous, charged entanglement.

Alana's reluctant seduction by Gary in the first few scenes strikes me as incredibly psychologically realistic. She outlines a boundary upfront and continues verbally repeating it, but by her actions edges toward it out of curiosity. She's reflexively annoyed at first, but as she becomes more impressed by his gumption, the annoyance becomes more of an act. She's caustic in order to maintain plausible deniability, mostly to herself, about her interest in Gary. She's lightly thrilled by the attention, and mostly just interested that something is happening at all. Why does she show up for their "date"? In large part, I imagine, for the hell of it. To be the subject of interest of someone who interests you is one of the most interesting things there is. She decides to let something happen, even as nothing "happens."

A mutual inappropriate crush is propelled by an engine of flattery. If you are not "supposed" to be desired by someone who nevertheless desires you, you must, presumably, be desirable indeed. Being a forbidden crush object is a high-amperage emotional experience, and if two people can provide that for one another, they can generate enough voltage to power their lives on for a while.

The question of what each of them is to one another is always a live one. The early plot development of Alana serving as Gary's legal chaperone is apt; it doesn't really matter what they are to one another, so long as they are something. Gary is thrilled to have gotten her to agree to this; soon after, Alana is thrilled to be party to Gary's performance in an official capacity. "I'm the chaperone," Alana whispers, annoyingly, to no one. Later on, she'll emphasize that they're "business partners." The movie makes sure to have other people ask Gary and Alana about their relationship status several times, and the answer never matters—it's that the question was provoked that counts.

The threats to Gary and Alana's connection aren't framed so much as threats to a relationship, but threats to their status as exclusive crush object—and thus their respective understandings of themselves as interesting and worthy. And maybe, in the end, that's what lots of romantic jealousy is. It's not about what they're doing with someone else so much as about what that says about you.

After being impressed by Gary's initial romantic pitch, Alana realizes that Gary is an enthusiastic pitch-man wherever he goes. A key threat to Alana's understanding of the relationship comes from a friend she runs into in the bathroom of the Mikado restaurant. The friend is more familiar with Gary's schtick than Alana is comfortable with; Alana has to confess that she's working with Gary, who, she's quick to observe, "actually a great businessman." The friend cuts Alana to the quick with a casual comment about Gary's sexual proclivities. In this moment, Alana has to recast her experience with him; perhaps she's not special to Gary at all, but just a ready mark. And she can't confront Gary about it, because it would reveal that she cares.

Alana has her revenge in the Felliniesque Tail o' the Cock sequence with Sean Penn, which is wonderful for several reasons—the lighting, the editing, the dance of eyes!—but no moment is better than the climax, in which Alana is unceremoniously flung from the back of Jack Holden's motorcycle, and a Paul McCartney needle drop heralds the arrival of Gary as romantic savior. "Let Me Roll It" is an exquisite tonal match for the scene: a big satisfied grin of a song, the central guitar lick like a repeating nod of affirmation. It's a dumbstruck love song with simplistic, childlike lyrics, heart on its sleeve and hands in its pockets at the same time: "You gave me something I understand / You gave me lovin' in the palm of my hand / I can't tell you how I feel / my heart is like a wheel / let me roll it to you." This is, in the course of the movie, a kind of cathartic reunion for the non-couple, but they do very little at all—it's enough to lay next to each other, content in the tacit admission of what's really been going on here. All it is is two people who have been buzzingly, distractingly aware of one another's attention in the midst of other things, finally basking in that awareness and that attention, for a moment.

I love, though, that we get to see some of Alana's relationship with other men, because this makes clear that she hasn't worked out how to deal with male attention broadly, and that Gary is only a part of that. She lives in an ambient atmosphere of objectification, as seen in the first scene with her Tiny Toes boss, or later with Jon Peters; how she feels about this is unclear. She responds to the romantic advances of aging star Jack Holden much the way she responds to Gary's—flattered by the attention, she decides to let something happen out of curiosity. But she can eventually tell that Jack isn't interested in her as a person ("Do you even remember what my real name is?"), which spoils it. Something similar happens with Joel Wachs, who provides a compelling adult alternative to Gary in the latter half of the film. Like Gary, he's got a vision for his life, which appeals to her; better than Gary, it's a wide-reaching, altruistic vision that makes Alana think bigger about her future. The idea that Wachs could be interested in her personally is enough to briefly, almost, turn her life around. But his attention, like Holden's, proves to be instrumentalist, too. Running back into Gary's arms is Alana returning to the person who actually made her feel special, even if imperfectly.

There are some things in common with Phantom Thread here. Both center on a relationship in which the terms are undefined, which gives things a possessive charge. (Compare Alma's "I live here" scene with the princess of France to Alana's bikini-clad confrontation with Gary's same-age love interest: "Is she your girlfriend or something?" "No, she's my manager. Does it seem like she is?" "Kind of!") Both films also feature a female character who gets sucked into the vortex of a talented male character's business enterprise, mostly because she doesn't have a lot else going on, which both empowers her and also, eventually, leads her to get edgy and defensive. Both films are about love as brinksmanship. And both films also feature a devastating mid-film humiliation scene for the female character (the asparagus scene in Phantom Thread; the opening night of Fat Bernie's in Licorice Pizza).

The whole arc of scenes with Alana in that lilac bikini are an acutely observed rendering of feminine shame: wearing a daring outfit, and going from feeling really sexy to feeling completely pathetic over the course of some hours. Starting with those loving close-ups of Alana's face as she receives Gary's praise in the morning, followed by her subtle misgivings apparent at having to manage a business in her underwear in the afternoon, and then watching her make a clown of herself at the afterparty, gyrating in front of a junior-high band, flinging herself at a random guy on the street, the day finally ending, bathetically, with her father's perfect "What the fuck!" It's miserable and it's genius, and a great example of how a director can use costuming to tell a story. Anderson is always great with subjectivity, and really lets us experience this stupid night WITH Alana, rather than making her the object of our scorn or pity. (I'm doing less writing about the filmmaking than I'd usually like, but that's easier for me to do on a second watch, and I wanted to engage with the thematic stuff this time).

But overall, one of the big differences between Licorice Pizza and Phantom Thread (and indeed, between LP and most of the rest of Anderson's catalogue) is the lack of tension, the lower stakes. PTA movies may be a little shaggy and weird, but they're almost always tense, whatever else they are. There's something different about Licorice Pizza, something looser and easier. Anderson is still carefully arranging the emotional notes in the scenes, but it's as if the characters themselves know that this stuff isn't life-or-death. These are just some things that happens sometimes, worth observing. In the Anderson catalogue, maybe the thing it most reminds me of is the flashback in Inherent Vice where Doc and Shasta never do find the dope.

This is a movie about someone who doesn't have their emotional shit together, who hasn't figured out how to live in the adult world, and as such I think it's compassionate and critical in the right measures. And actually, scratch that, because it makes it sound like I'm evaluating the movie based on whether it's conveying an appropriate moral message. Rather, better, I think it's an honest film. I think this stuff happens, often kind of like this, and you can see why. If you're saying you can't, I kind of think you're lying.

Is it romantic? Is it a love story? Kind of. Structurally, it's a romance, and there's all that running. I have found it sort of disingenuous when people (including cast and crew!) have described the movie as about "friendship" or "connection," or something; it seems very clear to me that it's about attraction, but not about sexual attraction, per se. It's much more about what infatuation represents, existentially. Infatuation is about wanting someone, about being pulled toward them like a magnet, but it's also about your magnetic pull on them. Wanting to be wanted is a little adolescent, but it's also quintessentially human, and it's an itch most of us have found weird ways to scratch in this life at one point or another. At its worst, this kind of thing is self-involved. But at its best, infatuation is like the McCartney song; two people giving each other something, unable to verbally express their gratitude, rolling their wheel hearts to one another.

[wilberfan]

A fascinating peek into the real Jerry Frick/Mikado.  (Make sure to read the entire thread and follow the tangents.)

https://twitter.com/mollylambert/status/1477482380793319424

Maybe this?  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1477482380793319424.html

[wilberfan]

Let's talk about the theatre marquee. 

You can't convince me that Paul chose that film just to pinpoint the narrative at a specific time.  Too many other things (eg, the needle drops) are working on multiple levels....

So, does "Live and Let Die" describe the relationship?   ("Live it and then let it run it's inevitable course.")  Is Gary--in his white suit-a kind of Bond-ian character?  (That feels like a stretch.)  And what of "The Mechanic"?

Thoughts?

[pynchonikon]

Let's talk about the theatre marquee. 

You can't convince me that Paul chose that film just to pinpoint the narrative at a specific time.  Too many other things (eg, the needle drops) are working on multiple levels....

So, does "Live and Let Die" describe the relationship?   ("Live it and then let it run it's inevitable course.")  Is Gary--in his white suit-a kind of Bond-ian character?  (That feels like a stretch.)  And what of "The Mechanic"?

Thoughts?

If Gary is a kind of Moore's Bond, does that mean Alana could be the Spy who Loves him? 

("Are you a spy? Are you here to destroy my evening, and possibly my entire life?")

[Drenk]

He's not a spy.

[Yes]

He does tell Alana "I'm not a secret agent"

[wilberfan]

You're right; forgot about that line.  It's gotta go deeper than that, tho...

[Shughes]

Finally caught this today (in the UK).

Loved it and can't wait to watch again.

Spoiler: ShowHide

About the ending - is there any chance that the kiss is a fantasy? Of his/hers? There's something about the shot construction that suggests it could be. We cut from them running, to the pinball palace/kiss, but end on them running again. Like they haven't arrived at the pinball palace yet...

Also, I know this has been discussed (I've been dipping in and out trying to avoid spoilers) but I'm interested in whose film we think this is.

There's an argument that it's Gary's - he's the first and last person we see, suggesting point of view. And if the kiss IS a fantasy it could be his.

But there's also a strong(er) argument that it's Alana's film - she drives a lot of the action. Once she is in the film do we ever spend time with Gary when she's not there?

Also (as someone here pointed out) the final scene seems to be a direct reaction to seeing a stifled relationship (Wachs) and her actions stem from this - the kiss is real, she decides not to let her own love be stifled (I love this, and it's great fucking writing - one thing reflects/affects the other).

Maybe we shouldn't get hung up on whose film it is and just say it's a two hander, and enjoy the central relationship.

I found the film melancholy and sad at times, despite a lot of laughs.

Lastly, as much as I enjoyed seeing B Cooper and Sean Penn in a PTA film, this just made me want to see him work with them as lead characters. Something they can all get their teeth into. I think the balance of these extended cameos are about right, any more in this film and it would detail that central relationship. 

[Yes]

I definitely think the ending is

Spoiler: ShowHide

fantastical. Throughout the movie they both manipulate and tease themselves to behave in the specific manner they perceive each other, this dream-like temporary dream-like fantasy that escapes reality. The ending is this big classic rom-com ending which is a great irony. And the ending almost concludes on 2 separate moments--Gary's fantasy (?) inside the shop (in which alana still calls him an idiot) and Alana's fantasy running.

[Drenk]

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Just read this in a five stars review of the movie.

The takeaway is if all men are children, might as well choose the actual child if he's the one that genuinely loves you.

This is unfortunately the major focus and final point of the movie. And it sucks. Embarrassing male fantasy.

And I have to quote this eloquent, yet insane first paragraph from Lauren Wilford'review on Letterboxd:

A warm tribute to a kind of relationship I feel like lots of us have stuffed way in the back of a mental drawer: the ill-advised crush turned briefly, oddly, achingly mutual, transmuted not into a romantic relationship but into an ambiguous, charged entanglement.

At least, the first review is honest about what the movie portrays. To pretend that an ill-advised crush is comparable to being attracted to a teenager is a stretch beyond belief. That way, you can project your life experience into the characters while ignoring Gary's age. I suppose that she isn't assuming that we've all been in love with teenagers. But the movie welcomes that kind of projection, though. Gary is a "teenager" and Alana is an "adult". They shouldn't be together...but should...they're soulmates...it's fate...Isn't life a bitch to constantly break them apart...Adulthood is a myth...
So even Lauren's analogy falls flat. The movie doesn't think this is ill-advised at all. They belong to each other. It's simply not correct. (Everybody around Alana is a cheerleader, so...not much pushback, actually, she could have kissed him earlier.)

You'd note that the openly romantic of Licorice Pizza being denied its romance is also very dishonest. It's only an "entanglement". But don't describe that kind of writing as "mental gymnastics" even though the performance is worthy of a gold metal.