Gus Van Sant, the director of Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho made his feature filmmaking debut in 1985 writing, producing and directing the extraordinary Mala Noche. Shot in black-and-white on the streets of Portland, Oregon’s skid row, the film is the chronicle of an obsessive love. Walt, an openly gay skid row store clerk, falls hopelessly in love with one of his customers, Johnny, a 16-year-old illegal alien who doesn’t speak English and scorns Walt’s advances. What’s interesting here is not so much the story but the way in which it’s told. Mala Noche blends gritty realism with highly stylized visuals to create a memorable vision of the milieu. It’s always nighttime in this world, even in the daytime: a Bukowski-like world of winos, illegals, sex trade workers and fringe citizens. Walt knows from the outset that his love for Johnny is doomed, but that knowledge doesn’t prevent him from maintaining an optimism and enthusiasm for the chase. Walt has a certain fatalism that allows him to accept things for what they are, be they unrequited love or unremorseful alcoholics. In the film’s opening preface, a handwritten statement declares that, “If you fuck with the bull you get the horn.” It’s evocative verities like this that make Mala Noche the stand-out movie that it is
This article appears in November 3 • 1989 (Cover).
