Mala Noche (DVD)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

I first became aware of the name Gus Van Sant when he made his infamous shot-for-shot remake of "Psycho" (1998). Today, he jokes that he did simply to take a bad idea out of the pool so nobody else would use it. At the time, I thought Van Sant was a major hack, an opinion that did not change when I discovered he was also the man who directed "Good Will Hunting" (1997) which a friend of mine once described as "a movie about a genius, written by two morons."

Then Van Sant´s career took an odd turn. After finishing off his Hollywood tour of duty with the respectable "Finding Forreseter" (2000), van Sant suddenly turned into an avant garde filmmaker with "Gerry" (2002), a genuinely structuralist film, and "Elephant" (2003), his lyrical and deeply affective tale of a school shooting. He followed up with the equally lyrical but somewhat less affective "Last Days" (2005), and now with the luminous and occasionally tedious "Paranoid Park" (2007). All of this from the guy who treated us to the sight of Vince Vaughn masturbating?

I´ve been a huge fan of Van Sant´s current phase (though I´m somewhat lukewarm about "Last Days") but I never took the time to check out his earlier, pre-Hollywood phase. Rather, it should be described as his mid-Hollywood phase. Van Sant actually began his career in Hollywood in the 70s, and moved back to Oregon after failing to connect with the studios. There he began to churn out a string of low-budget indie darlings, the best known of which are "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989) and "My Own Private Idaho" (1991).

The first, and perhaps the best of these features, is the seldom-seen "Mala Noche" (or "Bad Night," 1985), based on a book by Oregon poet Walt Curtis. Film distribution requires that every movie be categorized somehow, and it seemed easiest simply to call "Mala Noche" a "Gay Film" or, a few years later, to see it as a forerunner of "New Queer Cinema." It is a film about openly gay characters but unlike so many films of "Queer Cinema" none of its characters take on the burden of representing anything but themselves.

Walt (Tim Streeter) works at a liquor store, and openly, achingly lusts after a beautiful young Mexican man named Johnny (Doug Cooeyate). Walt doesn´t hide his desire. The film begins with his narration: "I want to drink this Mexican boy" and soon enough he tries to buy a cheap fuck with Johnny for $15. Johnny is the unattainable object of desire, however so Walt settles for a hard screw by Johnny´s friend Pepper (Ray Monge). An odd triangle develops between the three men, all of them young but Walt much older than the two illegal immigrants, with each person taking advantage of the other quite matter of factly.

Walt is hardly an idealized gay character. As desperately as he wants Johnny, he also thinks of him and other Mexicans as inferior, "stupid," and objects for him to buy and possess. He professes guilt later in the film for treating Johnny and Pepper as commodities, but it isn´t exactly heartfelt. Like most Americans, he wants to hire them for cheap labor, though Walt is looking for work of a more libidinal kind. He´s not a thug, though, just a young man who is so naturally charming and well-liked that he expects to get his way all the time.