Female Friendship & Freedom
Walking & Talking
This week’s podcast has been delayed due to technical difficulties, but you get to read this blog post anyway!
Walking and Talking (1996)
Written and Directed by Nicole Holofcener
Starring Anne Heche, Catherine Keener, and Liev Schreiber, Jim Corrigan, Kevin Corrigan
Tell me something, Artists—
Are you being fearless enough?
This lady has gotta know.
Walking and Talking is the first film written and directed by Nicole Holofcener in 1996. Life was different back then. People rented movies at video stores. Anne Heche was still alive.
And now, in the 21st century, making movies like this, with this level of quality—about the subtleties and nuances of our relationships—is pretty fearless, don’t you think?
A lot is the same about humans, even as things change technologically. People meet and get married, and they fight and break up and get back together. Other people remain single, and stress about their cat’s health, and call guys mean names behind their backs. People can lead you on over the phone with some idea about a relationship when all they want is a quick little sexual gimmick because they’re bored. (Unfortunately, with online dating, the percentages of that happening in some capacity have probably gone wildly UP.)
I think what Nicole Holofcener was suggesting by this title and this movie was “There is walking, and there is talking.”
Walk the walk, talk the talk. But maybe what we say and what we do can be investigated a little more, so that we say what we mean, and what we mean, we say, and we learn to actually do the stuff we say we believe in.
Integrity is so scarce. It always has been (make no mistake). So instead of getting on her high horse about integrity, she makes a film about friendship and two people trying to find themselves. Amelia (played by Catherine Keener) can’t understand why her ex-boyfriend Andrew (Liev Schreiber) broke up with her, and she kind of wants him back—or she just wants him to like her again. (He looks rather dashing in this film, especially in his black pants.) Instead of telling Andrew how she feels, she dates the guy from the video store, Bill (Kevin Corrigan) who she doesn’t really like, but he’s around, and he’s kind of bold, and he really knows what he likes, so she gives him a try.
Laura (played by Anne Heche) is Amelia’s best friend. She is newly running a therapy practice, and in love with her boyfriend/partner/fiance Frank (Todd Field), and she just doesn’t have a lot of time for Amelia anymore. Her relationship with Frank is juicy and still relatively early, and yet she has all these fears about being someone’s wife. (Rightly so. It’s an emotionally big job.)
The film is not really about anything other than this: two women friends are navigating life in big and small ways. They have been friends since childhood. They’re living separate lives. They’re dating or relating intimately. The reality they learn is, romantic relationships are challenging at times, and it is hard to keep up with your friends and maintain the closeness you once had. While all this is happening, you have to find a way to do your day job, and get your pet to the vet.
Singles, set in Seattle and written and directed by Cameron Crowe in 1992 was interested in exploring similar themes. The difference in approach was that he picked one character to isolate and highlight for us—Steve, played by Campbell Scott. Steve was like our Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, giving us the story of a small village, or apartment complex, and navigating his own relationship-issues.
We have this literary foundation for men’s films made by male filmmakers because women’s literature, for such a long time, was largely absent from popular view. Women have learned the language of men (as Meryl Streep will tell you), but men have not quite learned the language of women.
What is wonderful about Nicole Holofcener’s work is that she gives voice to the language of women, and that is largely through her focus on female friendships. By watching Holofcener’s films, you get a sneak peak into the language and relational strategies of women. However, she gives all the women equal weight, rather than letting one dominate as a main character. This means that her work vibrates with a sense of equality, a collective psyche or story, rather than the individual story. It’s a slight but huge shift in the way we watch and perceive cinema, while it stays couched in the genre of dram-edy.
Why is friendship such an important topic for film? One very good long-term friend is such a treasure. That is what Walking and Talking shows. We don’t tend to elevate friendship in our culture, or fully have a grasp on what it is and what it entails, especially in these days of social media and online friendships. A friend loves you unconditionally, and that friend is not paid to love you, or obligated to love you because of blood ties, or forced through societal standards to stick around. A friend doesn’t just watch your life in pictures. A friend loves you and shows up for you.
True friendship is true wealth.
My best friend Katie and I have a lot of similarities to Amelia and Laura in the movie.
Katie, to me, is magic. Seeing her face warms me up and makes me feel comforted. She has my back no matter what. I accept that I am the more needy one in our relationship, but I know it doesn’t mean she loves me less. She knows me so well, and she is a bit more skeptical and cautious than I am, which is why she is safe to have around. She has a societally savvy perspective, and she gives me warnings, and forgives me when I mess up. I can ask her what to do and trust what she tells me. We can also discuss pretty much anything. We hear each other out. She is less likely to put things out the way I do. But she also loves my boldness, because I have a lot of good stories. We are kind of running the world when we are together—or it feels like we are. It feels like we have it all figured out.
Speaking of my best friend, she did not do her homework and watch Walking and Talking in preparation for our film club discussion. She did come to visit me, however, and support me in something that mattered to me. And we talked a lot. And we had a great discussion about films, and what would happen in the future of the 1989 film Say Anything with Lloyd Dobler, played by John Cusack. This film was also created by Cameron Crowe, presenting Lloyd as a genuine heartfelt guy with a kind spirit, “who risks it all for the woman of his dreams.” We all know Lloyd Dobler stood with a boombox outside Diane’s house because he loved her so much. No one can get that image out of their heads when it comes to true romance.
Well Katie and I decided to imagine what happens to Lloyd Dobler and Diane Court when they are 45. We have it all figured out. He has a kickboxing studio and he mentors kids, and she has a kid and shows up so her kid can take the class, only to see Lloyd again, after all these years.
This is some gossip, hmm?
Katie and I are Walking and Talking later in life. We’re where it ends up, and we’re where it begins. We’re what it all boils down to. Two opinionated ladies who are always feeling like they’re messing up somehow, but who also think they’re rather special.
So if Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything holds so much power in the cinematic psyche, where is his feminine counterpart? Hmm?
Perhaps she is in a Nicole Holofcener movie, but the way we relate to women is different?
Are women allowed to stand outside with boomboxes? Can women be kickboxers and fly by the seat of their pants, and also be endearing and loveable? Can women open martial arts studios? Can we watch a movie about a woman who is unabashed and unafraid to speak from her heart, and maybe she wears a long trench coat, and teaches her boyfriend to drive stick-shift?
I want to see that lady on the screen.
And I’ll be on the lookout for the next Great Holofcener Film Shebang, whenever it arises from the earth.
Cheers, cheers, and hear, hear.
Ms. Wonderful
In the meantime, check out this Holoftember playlist on Spotify.
Bisous.