Sounding the Limits
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 10:01AM
A Review of the Film Nobody Walks
by Philip Hohle
Most of us never notice the sounds in a film. Yet a well-scored and mixed film can add multiple layers of meaning and can evoke emotions that will purposefully drive the message. Sound helps shape and maintain the parameters for a film’s meaning.
Nobody Walks is a film about a family and the boundaries each member must honor in order to maintain stasis. When boundaries are breached from the outside or from within, the integrity and stability of the family is compromised. This is a story of how boundaries are often tested—sounded as it were—and how they can be maintained, violated, or restored.
Peter is a cinematic sound designer, who works from his basement in a comfortable section of Los Angeles. Martine, a perky art film producer arrives from New York to work on a project and the family allows her to stay in their pool house. Her film is an artistic exploration of the complex social lives of insects and bugs, symbolic of the human relationships in this busy household.
Julie is Peter’s wife, a therapist with professional standards that distance her from the charms of a persistent client named Paul. Julie’s daughter Kolt is a high school student with designs on Peter’s assistant David. He in turn is just smart enough to ignore her overtures. Kolt’s little brother is young and not yet aware of what it means to have proper boundaries.
On the first morning of work, Martine tries to direct actors in performing some voice-over work for her project. Overly vague and esoteric in her direction, the underpaid actor finally gives up. It is abnormal for an actor to give up on a director, as it is for a director to blame the actor for insufficient direction. Still jet-lagged, Martine breaks down and Peter comforts her. In a close hug, Martine breaks the norms of the situation and begins breathing seductively in Peter’s ear. As Peter and Martine continue to work in the sound-isolated studio, the separation from the family buzz above invites a breach in the rules. Left alone in close physical proximity, Peter falls as easy prey to Martine’s subtle seduction.
Martine is from Manhattan where everyone walks, so she is dependent on this family group to get her from place to place. In one moment of the film, she decides to take a walk from the affluent neighborhood down to the more gritty section of the city. She laughs at the fact that a driver stopped to talk to her, thinking she was a prostitute. This New Yorker is unaccustomed to the norms of life in Southern California. She is also unaccustomed to the boundaries of a health family, and her presence upsets this balance.
Julie is perhaps the true leading character in this film. As a therapist, she is acutely aware of the construction and destruction of boundaries. Her instincts make her wary of Martine, and she challenges Peter’s working relationship. “Don’t embarrass me,” she warns, but Peter’s boundaries are already breached and he remains in denial.
The climax of the film is a party where Julie herself is severely tested. Angry at Peter’s embarrassing behavior with Martine, she is tempted to respond in kind. At a key moment with the family’s future in the balance, Julie takes her stand and draws the line. In parallel action at the same party, Kolt realizes the nature of her obsession with David and makes her own healthy choice. Peter is the only one who seems unable to fully recognize the breach in his boundaries—much less is he able to take corrective action to restore the balance.
The film’s ethic is encapsulated in Kolt’s symbolic relationship with her Italian tutor, who is more pedophile than professional. Strong like her mother, Kolt finds the courage to speak the truth to Marchello through a poem. Snubbed and stunned, this grown adult is wounded by Kolt’s choice words and he retreats with childish anger. Kolt’s stand leaves her freer and stronger than she was before she was threatened. With the exception of a non-explicit sex scene and some raw language, this film is a useful moral parable for families.
©2012 Parabolic Media
Reader Comments (4)
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