Institute History
Description
When Laura becomes engaged to her boyfriend, Frank, she is elated. But she wakes up in the middle of the night when she realizes, “Oh my God—how am I going to tell Amelia?”
Nicole Holofcener’s first feature is a charming, funny, often insightful portrait of female bonding and the challenges of being a single woman in New York City. Amelia and Laura have been friends forever, but their relationship undergoes stressful changes as Laura moves toward marriage.
Meanwhile, Amelia is having her own ups and downs with men. Her ex-boyfriend Andrew is always borrowing money and continually reports on his phone-sex endeavors. And “the ugly guy” at the video store keeps asking her out. To make matters worse, her cat is dying of cancer.
The film’s disarmingly low-key dialogue sounds like real people talking, and the congenial cast creates interesting characters that you enjoy spending time with. Walking and Talking screened exactly 20 years ago at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, as the first of Holofcener’s perceptive explorations of being female in America. Sundance Institute collaborated with Miramax and the UCLA Film & Television Archive to create a new 35mm print from the original film elements for this screening.