My Own Private Idaho **** (1991, River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, James Russo) – Classic Movie Review 397

Writer-director Gus Van Sant’s 1991 cult favourite follow-up to the 1989 hit Drugstore Cowboy is a bravely, inspiringly poetic study of a friendship between two young male hustlers, both with parent issues. Two teen heart-throbs of the day, River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, star together as best buddies living on the streets of Portland, Oregon, as hustlers, doing drugs and looking for male or female clients (or ‘dates’) – well as for love too. It’s a kind of 90s update on Midnight Cowboy (1969).

Phoenix plays the quiet, gay narcoleptic Mike Waters, who doesn’t know the identity of his real father who abandoned him and is obsessed with finding his long-lost mother. Reeves plays the rebellious posh kid Scott Favor, who has turned his back on his rich father, and is enjoying the street life at least in part to shock the old man. Mike is gay and in love with Scott, but he maintains that he’s straight and the hustler life is just a phase. They go chasing off from Portland to Idaho then to Rome to try to find Phoenix’s mother, but instead Reeves finds a beautiful girl (Chiara Caselli).

Obviously, it’s very grown-up material that might have surprised some of the stars’ teen fans in 1991 and perhaps even disturbed a few, but probably thrilled many. It’s extremely confidently and charismatically played and it’s handled with much bravura. But what its getting at remains quite mysterious and intangible, as in the best poetry.

The eye-catching visuals, the unsettling changes into surrealism, and the script full of Shakespeare and movie references all help to make it chic, intelligent and mind-blowing, without making any obvious statements or revelations. It’s supposedly loosely based on Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2 and Henry V, though you’d certainly hardly know.

Despite the strong meat of the subject, it’s a surprisingly subtle and original piece of work that leaves the work up to the imagination of the viewer. It is of hugely considerable value as a stylish, way off-centre mainstream movie – it’s quite an art object – and for the admirable tour-de-force turns of the stars. Phoenix’s agonising performance is one of his main claims to posterity. Reeves gives one of his finest pieces of acting, in an early sign that he wasn’t just a pretty face.

And, despite all the angst, torment and tragedy in the troubled lives of the two hustlers, it does exhibit a nice sly sense of humour. My Own Private Idaho is one of the variable Van Sant’s three or four great movies, along with Drugstore Cowboy, To Die For and Good Will Hunting.

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