A time capsule filled with laughs and love, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest Oscar-nominee is a cinematic daydream that poses more than just an easily answered ethical question.

Every film fanatic’s favourite director, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-nominated nostalgic reverie sets the 1970s San Fernando Valley ablaze. Titled after a now extinct Southern California record store chain, Anderson’s rose-tinted time machine is a love story in its simplest form: boy meets girl, boy chases girl, but do they get together? Now that romantic flicks aren’t afraid to turn the trope on its head (such as Chazelle’s La La Land ending on their break-up), Licorice Pizza is more than a stereotypical daydream about childhood crushes, it is a love letter that writes about hope, defeat, and the timelessness of teenage innocence.

America is at war, Live and Let Die is playing in theatres, and 15-year-old Gary Valentine is getting his picture taken (played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son, Cooper Hoffman). Waiting in line, he meets the photographer’s assistant Alana Kane (Alana Haim), the high school student charismatic and confident in his efforts at flirting with the 25-year-old. Like meteors colliding, the chemistry is explosive and instantaneous, the alienating age difference the only blemish on an otherwise perfect encounter.

The pair begin a friendship, and for the most part that is as much plot Anderson has to offer. For the entirety of their on-screen relationship, Gary and Alana circle around each other, stuck in each other’s intoxicating gravity. “Do you think it’s weird that I hang out with Gary and his friends all the time?” Alana asks her friend in a moment of pot-fuelled self-reflection. Yes, on paper there is a clear problem with their continual entwining, the ten-year age gap made glaringly prominent due to his legal requirement to still attend school. But in reality, there is more to it.

Alana is the youngest child, still moving from job to job, her Israeli father treating her as a child on numerous occasions (Alana’s family portrayed by Haim’s actual sisters and parents). Meanwhile, Gary is far from the average teenager, running businesses and attending press tours for his childhood acting career, the young but not-so-naïve entrepreneur feeling as much as the adult Alana should be. Yet the teenage Valentine is foolish and anxiously love struck regardless of the manly façade, while Alana is driven and mature despite her churlish tendencies.

Anderson tells their love story somewhat episodically, their shared lives segmented into a highlight reel of a fantastical ’73 California. Waterbeds, pinball machines, and peace signs, Licorice Pizza is alive with an ever-glowing sunset that backdrops the oxymoronic but startlingly beautiful world. As Alana and Gary run down the pavement, their energy is captured through extremely long shots that refuse to cut away, and for good reason. Rather than capturing a memory through fleeting snapshots, each moment feels like it is spread to its edges as I began to blissfully drown in the minutia.

Who knew pronouncing a name could be so difficult… Bradley Cooper and Cooper Hoffman. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer

But the emphasis on emotion doesn’t come without a price. Rather than the straightforward focus on their relationship, the microscope is fixed on their characters, seemingly random cameos popping up in the various storylines. It becomes hectic as Bradley Cooper’s prima donna caricature or Benny Safdie’s hopeful politician takes centre stage during their respective vignettes; Alana and Gary’s lives centring on whatever anecdote they currently find themselves in.

This lack of focus on a single story may be a turn off to many, yet all I could see was a mix of Tarantino’s lackadaisical ‘60s memoir Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Sally Rooney’s modern coming-of-age style. The only gripe is one I share with Alana: their age difference. No matter how poetic Anderson is (which he is), it was impossible to look past the grotesque reality of these star-crossed lovers. Their relationship was always engaging, yet I could never root for them to be together, unravelling everything that makes Licorice Pizza so brilliant.

Am I focusing too much on a technicality? I don’t think so. No matter how perfect they may seem, no matter how hard Gary tried to win Alana’s heart, I simply couldn’t look at the innocent Alana in any way other than a predator. I don’t blame her for her feelings, they are undeniably made for each other, but Alana’s growing affection is a sour note amidst a land of sweet. It is the fetishizing of a relationship that is about more than just their age difference, it is the villainising of a should-be hero, it is a disappointing reminder of a mentality that should be obsolete, let alone glorified.