Licorice Pizza

I suppose I should start this review with a potential trigger warning. I know of five people who have seen this film and who I’ve heard talk about it. From that group, one feels that the central relationship veers into stalker territory. However, the three of us that saw it together knew that in advance and disagreed. More on that later. Still, if that’s a really sensitive trigger for you, you’ve been warned.

The central story is set in 1970’s LA and a wealthy, self-confident 15-nearly-16 year old boy meets a ten year old woman and asks her out on a not-date, honest. The film then follows their story over a shortish but not properly defined period of time. It might have been a year or two, although two of us thought it was meant to be just one summer. According to Wikipedia, all the real events we see that can be dated occur in 1973, but in odd parts and in a different order. So I think within a year is fair enough.

If you’re old, like me, the soundtrack is awesome. I was eight when this was set, but I knew a huge amount of the music and loved it. I won’t be buying the soundtrack album, I already own nearly all the music anyway.

I would like to say I really liked this film, because I actually liked a lot of the parts. The problem is, for me, the parts don’t fit comfortably together.

We have a coming of age drama where I’m a decade too out to appreciate what he sees, two decades too young for her and the parts that possibly should work about being directionless in my life didn’t resonate with me because volunteering with a political campaign is not part of the life experience of most British people I know. (We certainly have political activists, but it’s not a rite of passage for most of us.) But that’s for me. While enough parts were alien to my experience I didn’t relate, enough were in my movie experience that I wasn’t lost.

We also have a rom-com. Although the beats are spaced out oddly around the elements from the other parts of the film, the vast majority are there and recognisable. I feel like I ought to disturbed by the age gap but they don’t look that different in age so it doesn’t trigger me. We need to talk about the “stalker” behaviour. Gary is, at least at first infatuated with Alana. He’s pushy, he wants a date, he asks for her phone number and the like. But he’s not a dick about it, only asks once and she responds positively. The one time he really steps over the line, with a silent phone call, there is context - he’s just seen her out with someone a bit older than him that he inadvertently introduced her to. It’s totally unacceptable behaviour, but it struck all of us as a jealous act, not a control/stalker one. I felt uncomfortable watching it but I understood the impulse. I felt much better when she a) instantly returned the call and b) responded with equal jealousy later on.

Then we have two kind of weird partial movies. There are probably enough scenes to make two shorts. One is a period piece on 70’s America. We have sexism, racism and homophobia, just little snippets, but on full display. Unpalatable at best. The other is easy to describe but hard to understand why it’s there. There are scenes, between Gary and Alana, where the emotional beats (but obviously not the exact words) would have worked nicely in a kitchen sink drama between a couple who have been married for twenty years. Why is this there between a 15 and a 25 year old who have known each other less than a year? It didn’t feel like two kids fighting, although most of the words made it sound that way. Perhaps all their scriptwriters are going through divorces and had a therapy moment?

I liked most of these parts, although I’m pleased I wasn’t an adult in the 70’s! I still can’t fit them all together into a coherent whole, which is a shame.

Bechdel Test: Pass. This is close. There are a fair few conversations between named female characters but they’re mostly about men. Not only about Gary, but mostly. However, Alana wants to be an actor, Gary introduces her to his agent and they talk about her acting skills. That whole conversation passes.

Ko Test: Fail. The only WOC we have are two Japanese women, who are part of an ongoing racist joke and never speak English.

Russo Test: Pass. I had to think long and hard about this. There are a couple of gay characters, that gives us our homophobia. One clearly fails, he’s the gay boyfriend and nothing more. The other one, however, is a more important character to the plot and although by the end the fact he’s gay is probably the most important facet of his character at the beginning it’s not clear (unless you’re up on minor political figures in LA in the 70’s) that he’s gay. There are a couple of bits that made me think he was, but I wasn’t certain. So he does pass all the parts of the test.