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- Director: Gus Van Sant
- Country: USA
- Year: 1985
- Principal cast: Doug Cooeyate, Sam Downey, Nyla McCarthy, Ray Monge, Tim Streeter
- Producer: Gus Van Sant
- Screenplay: Gus Van Sant, based on the novel by Walt Curtis
- Print source: Eclipse Pictures / Tartan Films
Mala Noche was the 33-year-old Gus Van Sant’s
debut feature and is the first of his bittersweet
odes to tender outcasts, remaining the simplest
and least burdened.
Arriving on the damp streets of Portland,
Johnny (Cooeyate) and Roberto (Monge) set
up in a skid-row flophouse and amble into
the orbit of a handsome clerk named Walt
(Streeter). With its feet on the ground and
its head in the time-lapse clouds, Mala Noche
will be the story of Walt’s unrequited love
for Johnny, a rhapsodic slacker noir pitched
on the edge of physical and emotional darkness
(the title means “Bad Night”).
Mala Noche sidesteps potential clichés with
an attentiveness to class dynamic and the
cultural differences between the grunge gringo
and his object of desire. The danger here is
an unexamined fetishism of type (inarticulate
Latino rough trade), but Van Sant finds
a tactful reticence in his characterisation
of the Mexicans and complicates Walt with
an awareness of his own privilege. In light
of Elephant, we can see Mala Noche as the
first act of a mind interested in graphing
the knowable contours of experience, the first
gift from a scrupulously compassionate artist.
Nathan Lee,
Village Voice
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