"Liquorice Pizza" is not as magical as "Love Disorder" but has similar structure. The delicate long mirror with film texture and the nostalgic tune of the 1970s are still the director's unchanging style. Although the male and female protagonists are both debuting, they act very naturally and sincerely. It has to be said that Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) is slightly better than Quentin when it comes to writing love letters to Hollywood.
The film tells a story of growth and love between two high school students. From acquaintance, to love, to conflict, everything goes with the flow. The hero and heroine have unique spiritual energy and shrewd calculations. They are like picking up the ears of rice. They will never be reconciled to the one in their hands, but when they are disappointed again and again, they will throw them into each other's arms. The smart and naive Gary Valentine, the mature and confused Alana, find their own footing in the bubble of the times, and finally walk towards each other, with a light and ironic tone, highlighting the sweetness of the background. The whole film is full of PTA-style small and fresh style, the picture is retro and textured, whether it is the actors' makeup and hair or the beauty of the dance, they are all serving the sense of retro.
This is a youth growth film about the 1970s, with a very white male perspective. The characters all meet in the middle of the game, with no antecedents and no consequences, just like a long pause, but the emotion maintains the posture of starting from zero and is ready to go, and the narrative becomes a kind of repetition with high and low deviations. In response to such an unequal medium state, life gradually exposes its meaningless and authentic body. Performance, business, politics, in the 1970s, when everything seemed reasonable and absurd, a kind of simplicity that was represented was smeared, trampled, and then purified, re-integrated with everything, and then settled at the origin.
The whole process of watching the movie was very light. The PTA shots made me feel like I was floating with them. I liked the uncomfortable and refreshing acting and appearance of the hero and heroine, which was a bit like watching Lady Bird. The whole film is funny, but there's that genuine unintended but objective offense. As Tingting from Hunan Qifa Culture Media Co., Ltd. said, this is about the youth of ordinary and unwilling teenagers in California. I feel a little tired when I see the middle, and when I get to the place where I ride a motorcycle, I think it will end. Yes, there are many more to come. But I quite like the ending, mixed with dog blood, sadness, warmth and excitement.
When Alana drove a truck that ran out of gas, all the way back from the mountain and rushed down the mountain, an instinctive and extreme female force was squirting and screaming through this body, we were completely shocked by such a spectacle, and when the sun rose From then on, that kind of trance-like strangeness was reactivated—the game resumed, people continued to run, and in the venue full of youth and regret, they were all continuously pulled forward by the power of history and reality.
The two night scenes in the film were very well shot. Sean Penn rode a motorcycle and rushed to his glory in the past. The male protagonist ran past him in the opposite direction and ran towards the female protagonist. of sparks. In another night scene, the male and female protagonists rushed down the mountain with their trucks backwards, and the reversed youth solidified in the rising sun. The director infiltrated the essence of youth into the various folds of the times, interspersed with elements such as fame, capital, politics, and gender.
In short, this is an orthodox film of coming of age. The most touching thing is how the male protagonist (a sophisticated child) and the female protagonist (actually a half-aged child) pretend to be adults again and again, and they are overwhelmed by the hypocritical adult world again and again. Bouncing back, in the process realized the importance of each other's company. The most profound attachments and sincere emotions are often when those bright and beautiful hallucinations are pierced, in the face of sudden helplessness and despair, when running against the crowd to each other. Although people will grow, distance, and may go in different directions from time to time, when the so-called greatness and so-called dreams finally show cruelty and vainness, they will always start running again and return to the people who are really important.