Licorice Pizza

San Fernando Valley in 1973: 15-year-old up-and-coming actor Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) meets Alana Kane (Alana Haim), who is ten years older. The teenager is immediately attracted to the twenty-something and a very special friendship develops between the two. But whether it can become more, seems questionable, because always new jobs, small loves and other everyday things put themselves in their way...

"Licorice Pizza" is the new film Paul Thomas Anderson. Episodically, it tells the stories of two people who shouldn't be together, and not just because of a significant age difference - like the titular mixture of licorice and pizza. How between Gary and Alana nevertheless a friendship develops, from which also more could become, draws Anderson with quiet humor, charm and a very authentic 70s Feeling, which is built up among other things by the shooting on 35mm film and with old camera lenses, as well as an atmospheric soundtrack.

Very authentic also works the Cast. While smaller supporting roles are embodied by familiar faces like Sean Penn or - wonderfully icky - Bradley Cooper, the two main characters are cast with still quite unused faces. Alana Haim, singer of the group Haim, is convincing as a quick-witted young woman who is still looking for her place in life. And Cooper Hoffman, son of the much too early deceased Philip Seymour Hoffman (who had worked with Anderson several times), is also a real revelation as a teenager between self-doubt and overconfidence.

Surely, "Licorice Pizza" does not tell a real story, but only small episodes of the beginning of the friendship (or love?) between Gary and Alana. What will become of them in the end, one can only guess. And yet - or maybe because of that - the film works extremely well. It is a real feel-good comedy with wonderfully drawn characters and a very special humor, which provides less loud laughs, but definitely leads to a pleasant permanent grin. Simply beautiful - and therefore also: absolutely worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp