Film Review: Beguiling Ensemble Nearly Salvages Frustrating ‘Nobody Walks’

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CHICAGO – From the very beginning of her screen career, Olivia Thirlby has specialized in playing youthful seductresses intent on jump-starting their male partners’ sexual coming-of-age. She exuded megawatt allure in everything from David Gordon Green’s “George Washington” to Brett Ratner’s memorable segment in “New York, I Love You.”

Rating: 2.5/5.0

Yet she received her best role to date in Jonathan Levine’s overlooked 2008 romance, “The Wackness,” in which she played a teen who agrees to go steady with a pot-dealing virgin, but ends up being repelled by his post-coital affections. To her, sex is just sex, though the intimacy she freely grants proves to have enormous repercussions on the mind, heart and nether regions of her inexperienced lover. It’s this character who shares the most striking similarities with Martine, Thirlby’s anti-heroine in director Ry Russo-Young’s diverting yet problematic new film.

Read Matt Fagerholm’s full review of “Nobody Walks” in our reviews section.

Like William Holden in “Picnic,” Martine is an outsider who brings about change wherever she goes. She has that strange sort of appeal that turns strangers into sexual animals, as is demonstrated in the film’s immensely awkward (and rather far-fetched) opening sequence set in an airport parking lot. The guy in this scene is emblematic of all the men in Russo-Young’s picture, who seem content in thinking primarily with their genitals. They’re an unlikable lot, but certainly not unwatchable. As Peter, the genial husband who falls under Martine’s spell, John Krasinski does a fine job of conveying his character’s mounting anxiety as the 23-year-old filmmaker proves harder and harder to resist, particularly when she starts nuzzling on his ear. Martine plans to have her abstract film projected at galleries in her hometown of New York City (which also serves as Russo-Young’s home base), but first must complete the film’s sound design with Peter’s assistance at his Los Angeles home. Cinematographer Chris Blauvelt (“Meek’s Cutoff”) views LA through the eyes of someone experiencing the city for the first time, heightening its beauty without pushing it into the realm of surrealism. There’s a wonderful sequence that illustrates the eroticism of sound itself, as Martine and Peter record various noises from sources that are viewed in extreme close-ups. Martine feigns innocence whenever she’s accused of being manipulative, yet it’s clear that she needs to forge a close relationship with Peter in order to get her project finished. Perhaps that’s why her other male admirers are of so little interest.

Continue reading for Matt Fagerholm’s full “Nobody Walks” review.

John Krasinski and Olivia Thirlby star in Ry Russo-Young’s Nobody Walks.
Photo credit: Nicholas Trikonis/Magnolia Pictures