Caminho Para o Coração

Anyone who really doesn't like LA would be foolish to watch this, but on the other hand, those of us who do like LA could do worse. I think it's not as bad as some people think it is. Yes, the characters are neurotic and horny navel-gazers. There are a lot of attempts to have sex in this. Some viewers might have a problem with an intergenerational pot-party scene. I don't think I've seen one of those before. The photography is pretty good and the acting too is not bad. Some have compared this film to Laurel Canyon which stars Frances McDormand and Christian Bale and is better. But it is a similar look at kind of a rarefied milieu wherein people can be annoying. But that's not really news, is it? I actually think a good rule of thumb is, if you start watching a movie and find you really don't like it, it's OK to stop. I'm just saying don't avoid things for the wrong reasons. Nobody Walks is 81 minutes and almost good.

Given the screenplay was co-written by Lena Dunham, creator and breakout star of HBO's "Girls", I was hoping this 2012 indie relationship drama would resonate strongly like Lisa Cholodenko's acclaimed Los Angeles-set films ("Laurel Canyon", "The Kids Are All Right"), especially with such a smart cast of actors. However, something feels amiss in director Ry Russo-Young's coolish approach to a familiar story of adulterous deception and family dysfunction. The pacing feels glacial, and the characters are just not that involving emotionally. Perhaps that was the intention in showing the shallow nature of the lifestyle being portrayed, but it rubs off on the film's inertia leaving it feeling quite flat. The setting is LA's funky-chic Silver Lake neighborhood where sound engineer Peter lives with his psychotherapist wife Julie along with their young son and her teenaged daughter from a previous marriage, Kolt. They epitomize the laid-back, everything's-cool attitudes one associates with affluent Southern Californians.

Enter Martine, a New York acquaintance of Julie's college friend who happens to be an attractive 23-year-old experimental filmmaker. She has agreed to work as Peter's assistant in exchange for him helping out on her latest project, an arty video installation revolving around close- ups of ants. How Martine emotionally invades the family is the crux of the story, and to the credit of Russo-Young and Dunham, she never comes across as an unrepentant interloper like more commercially driven exploitative films have done in the past. It's just that the plot pretty much goes the way you would expect it would go from the outset, although the characters carry decidedly ambiguous natures that make some of the story turns feel more complex than they really need to be. For instance, the inevitable tryst between Martine and Peter lacks believable passion because it feels almost matter-of-fact. In hindsight, I feel like it should have been the driving force in pushing each character toward self-examination.

The cast is not really at fault here as the acting, for the most part, is sensitive and assured. Olivia Thirlby (the best friend in "Juno") provides the requisite gamine quality needed to make Martine credible as an object of obsession even if her character remains a cipher throughout. The always becalming Rosemarie DeWitt ("Rachel Getting Married") delivers a thoughtful balancing act between earth mother and jealous wife as Julie. John Krasinski has a bit harder time escaping his amiable good-guy image from "The Office" and "Away We Go", but he does provide some surprisingly heated moments as Peter that make you wonder if he could do a greater variety of roles on screen. As the constantly yearning Kolt, India Ennenga appears to be channeling early Claire Danes, but she makes the character's unrequited love palpable. In smaller parts, Justin Kirk as a horned-up Hollywood screenwriter and Julie's attentive patient and Dylan McDermott as her self-possessed ex- husband bring much needed alpha energy to the proceedings. A late meltdown scene with Kolt's smarmy Italian tutor (Emanuele Secci) feels very out of place. Lethargic viewing.

I found this film to be initially intriguing but ultimately disappointing. And while the cast is attractive, and the direction is passable, it's the story that falls short. "Who cares?" is the reaction I would expect many people to have upon completing this (thankfully) short, arthouse type movie.

As a man, I was put off by the depiction of my gender here... virtually every man, from cheating spouse to pedophile teacher to lecherous patient to moronic ex-husband to shag-expecting seat-mate on a flight... is presented as either a "dog" or a jerk, and this is just wholly unrealistic. Can't a "strong woman" movie exist without casting every male as a hormone-driven slob, an idiot, or an evil czar to be toppled?

The story goes nowhere, driven there by semi-interesting people doing nothing of note. In the end, it's basically a character study about people that are hard to relate to, and becomes essentially a waste of talent and energy. Not worth your time.

Maybe I just got my expectations down to that special level of low, I find Lena Dunham stuff to be horrible, tiny furniture was just one of the stupidest things I have ever seen. So I think seeing her name attached to this helped me enjoy it because I thought okay this will be bad, and when it turned out to be good I was happy.

What makes this movie entertaining is you can watch any of the actors involved on their own, they could have made any of the characters the lead or the main focus and you would have been into it. I actually thought the length was a huge negative, ended maybe a good 15 minutes too early, from opening to credits it was a mere 78 minutes long although it might claim to be longer.

There isn't much of a plot, an artist moves in with a family she stirs things up, I won't give away too much but she's an attractive woman around men who like attractive women so its not that difficult to figure out. The movie does a good job of just sort of moving along without being about anything. One of the weak links was this sub plot with an Italian teacher, I could have done without that it was a little odd.

The young lead actresses India Ennenga who plays the sixteen year old step daughter to Krasinski, and of course the artist woman Olivia Thirlby held it all together and kept it interesting even when it dragged along. I don't know why this movie made so little money, it was decent, maybe it didn't get a big release. I just found it via netflix as I am sure most other people found it that way too.

I would say watch this with no expectations, and if you like movies with lots of action and dramatic arcs then just skip this one, this is more of an experience film.

The first clue is the runtime of 1 hour and 22 minutes. In a time when Hollywood stretches the limits of audiences' attention spans to their fullest 3 hour seated capacity, "nobody walks" writes its epitaph with (and within) its short start to finish as it starts quickly and runs out of gas just as so. While a specific length is not a necessity, this film is ambitious in its grand plans and yet negligent on its delivery. "Nobody walks"'s quest is to tackle one of modern human life's most specific challenges: monogamy; and more importantly: the desire to stray from it; and that desire in general. Its most profound assertion is that no relationship is sacred, as not even the boundaries of our most official are safe from the powers of lust. It goes even further into suggesting that all relationships are laced with and perhaps built upon this sexual wanting. The movie is passionate about its agenda. So much so; that it beleaguers each of its eight characters with this primal condition. Unfortunately, though all the characters suffer, no one is cured, no one is diagnosed, no one can even admit they have a problem, until the film is over. Ironically, much like a failing marriage, the film cannot deal with the conflict that it has created, so it just doesn't. In the very few scenes with perfunctory attempts, it falls short; as the acting and screen writing remain under equipped to deal with the subject that "nobody walks" promises to celebrate. Functionally anorectic, the film suffers classically from a case of biting off more than it can chew, as the story neither swallows its attempt, nor takes any other bites at all. The characters take no time to introduce themselves before beginning their preconceived flaws, almost as if it wasn't supposed to happen to them at all. And just as soon as they are done, with no question or contrition, they all quit and the credits roll. Perhaps, the film, in its greatest irresponsibility, fails most disappointingly as it never explains why, some characters, though all innately feral in carnality, find vaccination in the last moments of temptation and are spared of their supposed dubious inevitability, and yet others are curiously stricken and never recover. Time management seems to be the success and failure of many films and "nobody walks", though quick in its sprint, might have been better served with a slow jog, or even a more calculated stroll.