My Own Private Idaho
Directed by Gus Van Sant
- drama
The story
In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
What it’s like
Grainy, sun-bleached 16mm textures slide between saturated street-corner night and washed-out rural daylight, with long static takes that let the camera hold on faces and empty highways. Much of it is shot with a loose, observational patience: roadside diners, dim hotel rooms, the flat glare of Idaho fields, and a dreamy Italian coast rendered in soft haze. Sound does a lot of the work, with an ambient, drifting score and long stretches of quiet road noise broken by snatches of tinny radio and spoken interludes that feel half-remembered. The vibe is melancholy and restless, drifting between tender and unmoored, the kind of film that suits a late, solitary evening or a slow rainy afternoon when you're in the mood to be left alone with an aching, half-finished feeling. Pacing is deliberately loose and digressive, with scenes that wander and linger rather than build. The emotional register is wistful and sad, centered on two young men whose bond is tangled up in need, longing, and the search for a missing parent, with the arc tracing how each of them drifts away from the other. Intensity is moderate: there is sexual content, including male prostitution and nudity, drug use, and a few sudden flashes of violence, with the mood more often unsettling than graphic. It is for viewers who appreciate slow, character-driven art cinema about outsiders, and who can sit with ambiguity and sadness.
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