Made
on a shoestring and shot in black
and white, Gus Van Sant's love
story of a lonely convenience
store clerk and the young Mexican
immigrant he befriends remains
touching and accessible. Played
out in the cheap hotel rooms of
Portland's skid row, Mala
Noche was one of the earliest
gay films to take the gay lifestyle
seriously.
Even
as late as the mid-1980s when this
film was made, few film-makers had
tackled stories dealing with homosexual
romance on such a basic and realistic
level. The gritty realities of loving
someone from another culture and
perhaps being used by them is as
old as any other love story. And
Van Sant brought to the film the
special consciousness we would see
again in later films like My
Own Private Idaho.
