TOthe cinema from tomorrow 17 March, Licorice Pizza – other strange Paul Thomas Anderson films, the ninth of an unpredictable, virtuosic career and we imagine very free – he tells of a meeting in the suburbs of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley of the 70s.
He, Gary Valentine, he’s 15, it’s the day of the class photo. She, Alana Kane is 25 years old and it is the photographer’s assistant who gives them, as if nothing had happened, a pat on the butt. Alana delivers comb and mirror to whoever is about to stand in front of the lens, Gary sees her and asks her for an appointment. She tells him she doesn’t go out with kids, then it does.
Licorice Pizza: generation gap
It is the birth of a relationship that will evolve a lot in the abundant two hours of Licorice Pizza: it will be a friendship, a business partnership between waterbeds and actor aspirations of both. Maybe it will become a love storybut in this almost everything is left out of scope.
On the pitch, on the other hand, there are irresistible moments (Gary’s tragic audition, Alana’s promising audition, Gary’s arrest, the numerous runs of both – run a lot) And fabulous cameos (Bradley Cooper, psychopathic and nymphomaniac hairdresser, Sean Penn in a farcical version by Sean Penn). The two protagonists, Cooper Hoffmanthe son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Alana Haim, owner of the musical group Haimtogether with the sisters Este and Danielle, they are a happy discovery.
Licorice Pizza And a film full of grace, as bizarre as the relationship it describes. What brings to mind some others that cinema has tried to tell.
Alana Haim (Alana) and Cooper Hoffman (Gary).
Harold and Maudebut not only
A classic, even for the unforgettable soundtrack made up of songs by Cat Stevens when he was still called that (since 1995 the English singer has been called Yusuf Islam or Yusuf).
Harold, an eighteen year old nihilistfuneral enthusiast who likes to stage fake suicides to scare his mother, meets an 80-year-old maverick that changes his gaze on the world. He falls in love with her and decides to marry her.
“Harold and Maude”, 1971.
Also in Paris, Texas (1984) by Wim Wenders there was a couple with one big age difference: Jane, Nastassja Kinski, and Travis, Harry Dean Stanton. They are in love, then he started drinking, making scenes of jealousy.
We find them in the script written (and partly dictated over the phone) by Sam Shepard in Paris, Texas, city of Texas: he, a client behind a mirror, she performing in a peep show. Here too, great music: Ry Cooder.
In Breezy (1973) by Clint Eastwood, the couple formed by middle-aged real estate agent William Holden and 17-year-old hitchhiker hippy Kay Lenz resists.
A little bit because she doesn’t care, a little bit because Clintat the time he was a bold 43-year-old, he could not have found a better alter ego than the protagonist of Sabrina And The wild bunch.
Nastassja Kinski in “Paris, Texas”.
BDSM cuts
Two couples. A very English and very oblivious (Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas), the other too aware, Peter Coyote and Emmanuelle Saigner, wife of the director.
Their story of passion, then carelessness, decline, finally hate, told in Gall Moon (Roman Polanski, 1992), the destiny of the youngest lovers will forever change, enwrapped body and soul in that lethal and disturbing mix of charm and disgust that the couple now with no future leaves them as an inheritance.
The hidden thread (2017) by Paul Thomas Anderson is the latest acting proof of Daniel Day Lewis in a movie beautiful, set in the world of the other London tailor’s shop in the 1950s. Alma (Vicky Krieps) and Reynolds, her country maid becomes a model and muse in the big city, he humoral creator of beauty.
It would risk ending badly, between quarrels and prevarications, if Alma did not find out the formula of happiness: he victim, she executioner. Silent assent.
Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Secretary.”
Lee, Maggie Gyllenhaal, is a self-harming who in Secretary (2002) by Steven Shainberg tries to lead a normal life, doing a mundane secretary job. His boss, James Spader, who had filmed 5 years earlier Crash with David Cronenberg and therefore knows a lot, he catches one in her availability for absolute obedience.
The BDSM relationship that joyfully comes to life fits both of them like a glove, it will take them a while to figure it out (she has the hardest test, in a wedding dress), but in the happy future of the couple there are studs and a riding crop.
Intercultural relations
Edward scissor hands (1990) by Tim Burton is a 1950s version set in the neat American suburbs of The beauty and the Beast.
But there is also Frankenstein in the story of EdwardJohnny Depp, the result of a laboratory experiment by a mad scientist who gave him scissors instead of hands and the human Kim, Winona Ryder, also engaged at the time.
“Avatar”.
Avatar (2009) by James Cameron. Extraordinary pop tale and love story between a Na’vi warrior and the avatar of a paraplegic soldier on the planet Pandora. Truly oblative love: he renounces the burden of the body to stay with her.
In the 1998 classic Meet Joe Black (1998, Martin Brest), Claire Forlani runs into the wrong guy (Brad Pitt). Just that day Death decided to borrow her body to take a ride on Earth and take Susan’s father away, returning. Glacial love, with collateral damagebut in its own revelatory way.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) by Robert Zemeckis: brilliant film, for the mixed technique adopted, avant-garde at the time, but also for the unpredictable couple represented by Roger and Jessica. “What do you find there?” They ask her. “It makes me laugh,” she replies.
Interclass unions
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) by Herbert Ross. From the famous James Hilton novel, like a Latin teacher will be able to win over his students thanks to the meeting with a music hall soubrette. With Peter O’Toole and Petula Clark.
Cinderella always works. In Pretty woman, Richard Gere is a businessman and head cutter and companies, Julia Roberts a prostitute but honest. He takes her to the races, offers her the lobster, finally declares himself on the fire escape.
Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper.
Lightning strike (1941) by Howard Hawks. The babe of a boss, Barbara Stanwyckon the run, he falls into the home of a group of staid professors intent on compiling a dictionary. He will teach Gary Cooper slang and more.
Phantasmatic
Calvin is a young writer in crisis. On the advice of the psychologist he begins to write about a woman he met in a dream. He will end up falling in love with the imaginary girl, gradually changing the plot to accommodate their desires. The protagonists of Ruby Sparks (2012), Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan were already a couple in life when they made the film.
Lars is a girl of his own (2007) Craig Gillespie. Lars, Ryan Gosling, is a shy and friendless guy. The ideal girl for him is an inflatable doll. The community kindly accepts it.
Joaquin Phoenix in “Lei”.
In the very near future of She (2013) by Spike Jonze, Theodore, Joaquin Phonix, lonely and introverted manends fall in love with artificial intelligence which in the original version has the voice of Scarlett Johansson and in the dubbed one of Micaela Ramazzotti.
Romantic with a plus
There is a most original love story than that described in Wall-E (2008) by Andrew Stanton, between the wandering robot that sweeps iron debris on an Earth devastated by climate change and EVE (Examiner of extraterrestrial vegetation), a robot that has come down from a spaceship for a patrol?
They dance together like Ginger and Fred and even when she finishes the charge he doesn’t stop taking care of her waiting for an awakening. Objectively, there isn’t.
iO Donna © REPRODUCTION RESERVED