Scene Steal­ers: The fraught Shab­bat din­ner in Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson’s love let­ter to grow­ing up in the San Fer­nan­do Val­ley in the ear­ly 1970s bom­bards us with mem­o­rable scenes that are by turns hilar­i­ous, revolt­ing and touch­ing. Licorice Piz­za is, indeed, a mass repos­i­to­ry for future cult scenes.

There’s the one where Alana Kane (played by Alana Haim, one third of sis­ter­ly genre-bend­ing musi­cal trio HAIM) dri­ves a truck back­wards at full speed with its engine off down the hilly Enci­no byways in order to escape the wrath of Bradley Cooper’s unhinged pro­duc­er Jon Peters. Or how about the sequence where Tom Waits directs Sean Penn’s Jack Hold­en (a walk­ing homage to William Hold­en) in a drunk­en motor­cy­cle stunt on a restau­rant golf course that almost knocks Alana unconscious.

How­ev­er, the scene I want to focus on takes place between the four blue walls of the Kane family’s din­ing room, rather than beneath the expan­sive skies of the Val­ley, in which a Shab­bat cer­e­mo­ny takes place; alleged­ly inspired by a real Passover din­ner expe­ri­enced by the Haim sis­ters who described it as ​“the most awk­ward ever”. To reflect that real­i­ty fur­ther, the Kane fam­i­ly are all played by the real-life Haims: moth­er, father and three daugh­ters. What makes this scene one of the most delight­ful in the film – and per­haps PTA’s unique spin on cringe con­tent – is that it com­pris­es care­ful­ly engi­neered ele­ments which togeth­er coa­lesce into a cat­a­stroph­ic por­trait of a fam­i­ly on the verge of a ner­vous breakdown.

But to get to the eye of the cyclone, we must start with the out­sider, Lance Bran­ni­gan. Lance is main guy Gary Valentine’s slight­ly old­er, slight­ly cool­er colleague/​rival, who has man­aged to score a date with Alana due to his pur­port­ed matu­ri­ty. He’s played by Skyler Gison­do, who after his ultra-charm­ing turn as Jared in Olivia Wilde’s Books­mart, land­ed the role of anoth­er scene-steal­ing nuanced goof.

Lance is a lov­able show-off douche with aston­ish­ing self-belief and con­fi­dence. This knack for endear­ing him­self to oth­ers proves to be iron­ic as he point-blank refus­es to say the Hamotzi bless­ing because his ​“per­son­al path” has led him to ​“athe­ism”. Of course this is an irrel­e­vant point, Judaism being an eth­no-reli­gion where faith is no pre­req­ui­site for iden­ti­ty, as high­light­ed with­in this cin­e­mat­ic con­text by the work of Jew­ish author PJ Gris­ar. Athe­ist or not, Lance is still a Jew, and by refus­ing the Kane patriarch’s offer to take part in their tra­di­tion, he kick­starts an hilar­i­ous exis­ten­tial argu­ment with Alana in the frontline.

Lance is soon ush­ered out of the house after a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with Alana about the look of his penis (a true con­fir­ma­tion of his Jew­ish­ness) before the youngest Kane march­es back in for a con­fronta­tion with her father. Alana is still try­ing to please her fam­i­ly, espe­cial­ly her father, by bring­ing home Jew­ish boys, but as she grows old­er she realis­es that, while her Jew­ish­ness large­ly defines her, it’s not all of her, and it shouldn’t have to fac­tor in to who she dates.

This gen­er­a­tional shift from reli­gious con­ser­vatism to a more lib­er­al out­look is high­light­ed in her furi­ous jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of why she brought Lance home: he’s an actor, and a famous one at that. Shouldn’t that be enough? Shouldn’t what he choos­es to be be more impor­tant than what he intrin­si­cal­ly is? Alana believes it, but not in every sit­u­a­tion. She can’t escape who she is, and she takes pride in it. Bar­bra Streisand, Peters’ girl­friend who is allud­ed to but unseen in the film, is the ref­er­ence behind Alana’s ​“Jew­ish nose” that agent Mary Grady high­lights dur­ing their meet­ing (anoth­er con­tender for best scene).

How­ev­er, what makes the Shab­bat scene imme­di­ate­ly stand out is the fam­i­ly dynam­ics of the Kane fam­i­ly. On one side of the house, calmer sis­ter and moth­er duo Danielle and Don­na retreat to clean and tidy, while gold­en child Este remains in the vicin­i­ty of the argu­ment, qui­et but smug. Alana, the youngest, most-explo­sive child, who wants noth­ing more than to make her mark, and Moti, the iron fist of the fam­i­ly, lock horns. Until Alana’s gaze and wrath turn to Este, upon whom she choos­es to lev­el her frus­tra­tions since there is only so far one can go against their own par­ents. Indeed, the sub­mis­sive rela­tion­ship she has with her father does call into ques­tions her (con­tro­ver­sial) claims to be in her ear­ly twenties.

The real­ism of sis­ter­ly rival­ry and the microag­gres­sions that come hand-in-hand with that unique dynam­ic is cap­tured by PTA through a series of rapid­ly edit­ed, loud­ly-expressed insults and accu­sa­tions. It’s a minia­ture mas­ter­class in com­ic digres­sions and the com­bustible sit­u­a­tions that ulti­mate­ly keeps fam­i­ly life dan­ger­ous­ly exciting.

Sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions, exclu­sive essays and more