WALKING AND TALKING
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Catherine Keener, Anne Heche, Liev Schreiber, Todd Field, Kevin Corrigan. Screenplay: Nicole Holofcener. Director: Nicole Holofcener. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
WALKING AND TALKING is the kind of film men generally see only if dragged by their wives or girlfriends. They react much the same way a male character in WALKING AND TALKING does when he refers to the acoustic guitar tunes preferred by his fiancee as "vagina music;" by that definition, this would certainly be a "vagina film." With recent flops like NOW AND THEN and MOONLIGHT AND VALENTINO giving films about female friendships a rather bad name, it might be easy to dismiss WALKING AND TALKING sight unseen. But for what it's worth, writer/director Nicole Holofcener puts a Woody Allen spin on the genre, making her debut feature a quirky neurotic comedy in which appealing performances help counteract a lack of substance.
Two life-long best friends are at the center of WALKING AND TALKING: Laura (Anne Heche), a therapist-in-training; and Amelia (Catherine Keener), a newspaper classified ads editor. Now rounding the corner from twentysomething to thirtysomething, the two women face very different relationship troubles. Laura has just gotten engaged to Frank (Todd Field), but suddenly begins to notice very little flaw in his personality, and to be attracted to other men. Amelia, meanwhile, seems to scare off every man she is involved with, and goes out with a scruffy video store clerk (Kevin Corrigan) because he seems unlikely to dump her. Through it all, Laura and Amelia find it ever more difficult to remain close, as growing older means walking and talking with others as well as with each other.
WALKING AND TALKING seems to have two major themes working at the same time. On the one hand, it is about the romantic relationship of our two heroines, and it provides some clever and amusing insights. Both Laura and Amelia are living the life the other one seems to want -- Laura cuts off Amelia's description of a first sexual encounter with someone, knowing she'll never have such an encounter again, and Amelia just wants every man to be The One. Holofcener makes her characters sexual beings without having it be part of the joke that a woman is a sexual being, the way it happens in many films written by men, and there is an impressive ease to the way in which she portrays men and women who are comfortable with each other. One such scene finds Laura and Frank beginning a casual shoving match in an elevator which turns into a playful war, and it is typical of the economy with which Holofcener establishes the dynamics of her characters' relationships.
Surprisingly, the one relationship which doesn't always come across is the one which is the basis for WALKING AND TALKING's other main theme, the friendship of Laura and Amelia. There are plenty of signifiers which show us how significant this friendship is -- an opening scene of Laura and Amelia as pre-teens reading "The Joy of Sex," the illness of the cat they shared when they were roommates -- but the signifiers don't take the place of effective scenes between them. It is true that the problem between the two is that they don't spend much time together any more, but we don't get enough opportunities to see their friendship at its best so that we can feel a sense of loss over their friendship at its worst.
WALKING AND TALKING is not exactly meaty fare in either of its two main themes, but what sells the film is its frisky tone and a cast which downplays the angst. Catherine Keener (who was the insecure ingenue in LIVING IN OBLIVION) is a delight as Amelia, and keeps her borderline obsessiveness from becoming either pathetic or disturbing. It's a funny and sad performance as a woman having difficulty differentiating between needing and needy. She also has two great co-stars to play off in Kevin Corrigan as Bill, the quiet video store clerk with an excessive fondness for horror films, and Liev Schrieber as Amelia's ex-boyfriend-now-friend Andy. Keener has an ability to connect with other actors, to really seem to be listening, and that makes for some priceless interactions. Anne Heche is a weaker link in a weaker role; her Laura's predicaments never seem as urgent to her or to us.
Nicole Holofcener's script might be a bit talky, but the talk is sharp and the talkers even sharper. Forget labels like "chick film." This one talks the talk _and_ walks the walk.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 walkie-talkies: 7.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw
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