Jamie Righetti – Bitch Flicks

A Place to Call Home: The Search for Love and Identity in ‘My Own Private Idaho’

In many ways, Gus Van Sant’s ‘My Own Private Idaho’ is a film about duality, weaving together conflicting stories about love, family and the inescapable lure of home, even when it is a place you can never go back to again. And that duality also lends itself heavily to the sexual identities of the film’s main characters, Mike and Scott, two street hustlers with opposite views of their own bisexuality…

This guest post written by Jamie Righetti appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

In many ways, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991) is a film about duality, weaving together conflicting stories about love, family and the inescapable lure of home, even when it is a place you can never go back to again. And that duality also lends itself heavily to the sexual identities of the film’s main characters, Mike (River Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves), two street hustlers with opposite views of their own bisexuality, as well as the fulfillment they receive from their life on the street and where it will ultimately take them.

The film’s primary story follows Mike, a scrappy street hustler prone to frequent fits of narcolepsy during which he recalls memories of his mother and his childhood home. Mike bounces around between Seattle and Portland, living rough on the streets and hanging out with other street kids in the same restaurant to keep out of the cold. Mike hustles out of necessity, making just enough to eat and sometimes weaseling extra money out of clients to get by. On the flip side, there is Scott, the handsome son of Portland’s mayor and the heir apparent. As the rich kid slumming it for fun and (according to him) playing gay for pay, Scott serve as a direct foil to Mike as both a character and a subplot in the film.

It is worth nothing that despite the fluidity present in both characters’ sexuality, the film still tends to use very binary language and coding with its depiction of sex work. Mike and Scott are referred to as “street hustlers” rather than prostitutes, which serves to reinforce Scott’s claim that he “only has sex with men for money.” Having sex for pay helps root their identity within the boundaries of masculinity and serves as a direct contrast to selling one’s body for sex, something presumably only women can do. This is further highlighted in our first glimpse of Mike with a client, during which he is being serviced by a client, rather than the opposite. Furthermore, there is often an erasure of Mike’s bisexuality based on his attraction to Scott. Although Mike is seen with more male clients than female ones, he does go home with an older female client and, prior to his narcoleptic episode, seems both willing and interested in sleeping with her. The duality present in both Mike and Scott’s sexuality is not only central to a film about identity but also in understanding the complexities of both characters, who are not as simple as the gay and straight labels often stuck on them.

The duality of My Own Private Idaho also plays out in strange ways at times. Midway through the film, as the story begins to center on Scott, the dialogue and characters take on a Shakespearean tinge. Van Sant has spoken about the influence of Henry IV and Henry V on the film, which is further explored with the introduction of Bob (William Richert), a Falstaff parallel and father-figure to Mike, Scott, and the ragtag crew of street kids they spend time with. While these scenes might feel slightly out of place, especially alongside the gravity of Mike’s story and the search for his mother, they give important insight into Scott. In a conversation with Bob, Scott reveals that he’s just shy of his twenty-first birthday, which is when he will inherit his father’s money. When this happens, Scott will leave the streets and go back to his old life. Within this context, the antiquated Shakespearean dialogue, which feels forced and hollow, serves as a metaphor for Scott, who is well-liked but truly out of place in a world of misfits who don’t have a comfortable identity to fall back on when they get bored.

But while Scott has willingly turned his back on his family, Mike is desperate to reconnect with his. He brings Scott along to Idaho to see his estranged brother to seek out information about where his mother is staying. Mike finds an odd comfort in his narcoleptic flashbacks and his quest in some way is a search for his first love, the one that nostalgia has deemed pure and simple. By reinforcing the purity of true love, it will allow him to validate not just his feelings for Scott but also his bisexuality as a whole, which is often at odds with his lifestyle, where love is commoditized and quantified, and where his sexual preferences must be fluid for profit but never real.

There is perhaps no greater example of this than in the film’s famous campfire confession, a scene which Phoenix himself rewrote. During their road trip from Portland to Idaho, Mike and Scott are forced to camp out in the desert overnight. As they huddle around a meager fire, Mike struggles to open up to Scott and confess his deep feelings. There is a stabbing ache of recognition that comes when Mike timidly asks Scott what he means to him, as both men are suddenly very aware of the weight behind those whispered words. Scott in turn, declares that Mike is his best friend but nothing more.

Recalling an earlier scene in which Mike and Scott are cover boys on gay magazines, Scott tells Mike that he only has sex for money, despite him not being in need of the cash. Before Mike can object, Scott adds as a hasty afterthought: “And two guys can’t love each other.” For Scott, his sexuality is rooted in flawed logic that as long as he’s providing a service and not ascribing any true emotion to sex, he can have his fun and still identify as straight. But his actions seem to contradict this, as he has chosen to hustle not out of necessity but because he enjoys it. For Scott, his chosen lifestyle allows him the freedom to fully explore and express his bisexuality in a way in which his upbringing could never allow. But the roots of his childhood are too deep for him to fully shake and instead, he must mask his sexuality as a commodity, in order to allow him to eventually return to his former life.

Perhaps seeing through this, Mike counters by trying to poke logic into this theory. “Well, I don’t know,” he says. “I could love someone even if I, you know, wasn’t paid for it. I love you, and you don’t pay me.” There is a purity in Mike that is quite absent in Scott, as he is more than certain that his feelings for Scott are real. But despite this, he is still seeking validation – not only love that is returned but that it can be acceptable as love. Scott, however, is unable to return this affection because it will break his own construction of his sexuality, which can only be cast in black and white.

It’s a brilliant and raw scene in which Phoenix oozes vulnerability and insecurity, even physically turning in on himself to shield himself from Scott’s rejection. In the end, Scott feels bad for his friend and calls him over to go to sleep. The two embrace, with Mike folding into Scott’s arms, dutifully accepting the scraps of affection he’s allowed, while swallowing down his unrequited attraction. The two continue their journey as if nothing has happened, but as an audience we’re now attuned to an extra layer of melancholy that surrounds Mike and his interactions with Scott.

In Italy, Scott and Mike’s stories diverge once again, as Scott falls in love with Carmella (Chiara Caselli), an Italian woman living at the farmhouse where Mike’s mother was last seen. It is Carmella who tells the two that Mike’s mother returned home, making his trip (and the things he did to finance it) pointless. Mike sticks around, waiting for Scott so they can return home but Scott is distracted by Carmella. A brokenhearted Mike is subjected to several nights of overheard pleasure between thin bedroom walls before Scott finally hands him a ticket home and abandons him in Italy. But as with many of Scott’s actions, it feels slightly disingenuous. While he certainly is attracted to Carmella, it also feels convenient that he can use her as a means of escape, thereby blocking any reciprocal feelings for Mike that he might be repressing.

Likewise, the telegram Scott receives regarding his father’s death serves as a final nail in the coffin for his old life. Upon his return to Portland, Scott has stepped into his old shoes, riding around in limousines, wearing expensive suits and shunning anyone from his former life, including his one-time mentor and father figure, Bob. In a beautiful juxtaposition, Scott is attending his father’s funeral service, a demure and somber affair, at the same time that Mike and his former friends are celebrating the life of Bob, who died of a broken heart after Scott’s rejection. Scott eyes his former friends with an almost unreadable look on his face; neither envious nor angry, but perhaps (picking up where Mike left off) simply seeking comfort in nostalgia, while simultaneously knowing it is a place where he can never return.

The film then ends on an appropriately ambiguous note. Mike is once again in Idaho on “his” road, the one that reminds him of a “fucked up face.” He collapses after another narcoleptic fit and is robbed of his things by a passing pick-up truck. Finally, a car pulls up and an unseen person picks up Mike and drives away with him. It is unclear if he has been rescued or if he is in danger but it is clear that either way, he (and Scott) won’t find a happy ending. While Mike has the freedom to revel in the lifestyle and bisexuality that Scott can no longer can afford, he also is lacking the comfort of reciprocal love that Scott now has in Carmella. Likewise, neither can ever go back home, quite literally for Mike and metaphorically for Scott, again. It is a bittersweet conclusion that renders Mike’s fate irrelevant and makes us in turn seek to return “home” to the earlier scenes where both men were free to love without fear.

Jamie Righetti is an author and freelance film critic from New York City. Her work has been featured on Film School Rejects and Daily Grindhouse, as well as in Belladonna magazine. Jamie is the host of the horror podcast, ScreamBros, and she has just released her debut novel, Beechwood Park, which is currently available on Amazon. You can follow her on Twitter @JamieRighetti.

My Sister’s Keeper: When Sisterhood Sours in Horror Films

But there’s also a darker side to sisterhood, where rivalries take violent turns and where bonds are almost too strong, superseding everything else including reality. When sisters are pushed to the extremes, when women don’t meet society’s expectations, what does this tell us about the constraints on women to conform to idealized versions of femininity and sisterhood? Are bad sisters just failures or are they simply women with complicated narratives that a patriarchal society doesn’t allow room for?

This guest post written by Jamie Righetti appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger warning: discussion of suicide and abuse]

The beauty of sisterhood has been extolled in cinema for generations, where undeniable bonds and deep love carry women through a multitude of obstacles and life-altering events. In A League of Their Own (1992), the rivalry between Dottie (Geena Davis) and Kit (Lori Petty) drives them to achieve greatness when the country needed it most and their undeniable love for one another helps them mend their relationship in the long run. In Eve’s Bayou (1997), two sisters, Eve (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and Cisely (Meagan Good), take turns sheltering each other from the truth behind a dark childhood trauma and help each other heal after death of their father. Despite the variety of stories, the message is clear: the love between sisters can overcome anything. It is a powerful, transcendent bond that can even be inexplicitly supernatural at times.

There’s possibly no greater example of female sibling rivalry gone wrong than Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), a Robert Aldrich film about two feuding sisters living in a crumbling mansion, which was fueled in part by the notorious rivalry between stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. In the film’s opening sequence, the stage is set for conflict. Baby Jane (Davis) is a child star and adored by the girls’ father, but later in life, it is Blanche (Crawford) who finds success in Hollywood as Jane’s star wanes. One evening, the Hudson sisters return to their mansion and when one sister gets out to open the gate, the other tries to run her over. Although we cannot see who is behind the wheel, the accident leaves Blanche permanently paralyzed.

Blanche now uses a wheelchair and Jane’s mental health declines, her behavior having grown more erratic over the years. Jane’s desperate attempts to regain her childhood stardom are in many ways directly tied to the death of her father, but her adoration (which isn’t matched by Blanche) also hints at sexual abuse. It is this correlation between success and warped love that causes her to lash out at her sister, whose success she sees as the reason her own stardom ended, which in turn brought an end to the abuse that she had categorized as love. The seeds of bitterness and dysfunction run deep for both sisters.

In the end, we discover that Blanche endures Jane’s senselessly cruel behavior because she was the one driving the car that fateful evening and it was Jane, not Blanche, who was pinned against the gate and nearly killed. Blanche has endured decades of abuse as penance for her anger, choosing to keep the truth of the accident a secret not just to punish herself but to punish her sister as well by never revealing the truth behind the story and allowing Jane to believe she was capable of such a heinous act against her own sister. As a result, Jane unleashed a torrent of abuse on to Blanche. The downfall of the Hudson sisters did not come from faded stardom but from a sibling rivalry that warped itself into a vicious cycle of abuse in place of affection.

But just as bitterness can tear two sisters apart, love can also distort into an obsession so strong that it clouds reality and puts everyone else at risk. In Sisters (1973), director Brian De Palma continues his early career homage to Hitchcock with a twist on Rear Window (1954), as well as a small nod to Vertigo (1958), with the story of Danielle (Margot Kidder), a beautiful model sheltering her dangerous sister, Dominique (also played by Kidder). The film opens with a hidden camera game show, where an unwitting salesman, Phillip (Lisle Wilson), is pranked by Danielle. He wins dinner for two and decides to take her out that evening. The two make it back to Danielle’s Staten Island apartment. Although they are menaced by Danielle’s ex-husband, Emil (William Finley), they spend the night together. In the morning, Phillip overhears Danielle arguing with her sister, Dominique, in the bedroom. Danielle is unwell and asks Phillip to pick up a prescription for her as well as a birthday cake, so she can celebrate her sister’s birthday. Upon his return, Phillip is attacked by a frenzied Dominique, who stabs him to death in the living room while Danielle is sick in the bathroom.

The murder is witnessed by one of Danielle’s neighbors, Grace (Jennifer Salt), a journalist known (and disliked) for exposing police corruption. In the film’s more overt Hitchcock homage, Grace struggles to get the police to take her claims seriously, and when they finally do search Danielle’s apartment – which Emil hastily cleaned up – they find no trace of Phillip’s body or Dominique. Although the audience knows the truth, Grace’s sanity is continuously called into question as she tries to uncover the truth about what happened. Finally, Grace discovers the truth about Danielle and Dominique: the two were Canada’s first conjoined twins, however Dominique died shortly after an operation to separate the two women. Armed with this revelation, Grace tracks down Danielle, who is once again under the control of her ex-husband, and realizes that Danielle has split her own personality, assuming the identity of her long-dead twin as a means of keeping her memory alive.

Although Sisters subtly highlights Danielle’s condition, by showing her reliance on pills and her violent withdrawal shortly before Phillip’s death, in many ways, the film is less about a diagnosed mental illness and more about Danielle’s inability to cope after the loss of her twin. For Danielle, and in turn “Dominique,” there is no greater intimacy than the one shared between twin sisters. Although a part of Danielle yearns to break free and live her life as she wishes, as evidenced by her date with Phillip, ultimately she is powerless to the bond she shares with her twin, which will take over to eradicate any threat. By quantifying Danielle and Dominique as conjoined twins, there’s an added sense of symbolism – the two are quite literally part of each other; even after the death of Dominique, part of her would inevitably live on in Danielle.

The powerful, protective bond between sisters is a theme that is also explored in A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), a South Korean horror film written and directed by Jee-woon Kim. Based on a Korean folk tale, the film introduces Soo-mi (Su-jeong Lim), a young girl questioned by doctors about an unnamed event which caused her significant trauma. Although she refuses to answer any of their questions, she is allowed to return home to her family’s large estate where she lives with her father (Kap-su Kim), her younger sister Soo-yeon (Geun-young Moon) and her stepmother (Jung-ah Yum). Although the film initially brings in a supernatural element — bloody ghosts and strange noises set us up for a ghost story — there is also a very real conflict between the sisters and their stepmother. Family photos reveal that the girls’ hatred of their stepmother is rooted in the death of their own mother. Their stepmother was a nurse who worked with their father and worked as an in-home nurse while their mother was sick. In turn, Soo-mi finds vicious bruises on her sister’s arms, indicating that the hatred is quite mutual.

Soo-mi becomes increasingly protective of her younger sister, who seems to be the target of their stepmother’s aggression. When Soo-yeon finds their pet bird has been killed, she goes into her stepmother’s room where she finds photos of herself that have been defaced. Her stepmother then grabs her and locks her in a giant armoire, ignoring the girl’s terrified pleas to be released. Finally, Soo-mi releases her sister, begging her forgiveness for not hearing her cries for help. When Soo-mi confronts her father about Soo-yeon’s ordeal, he blames her for the problems and drops a bombshell: Soo-yeon is dead. Soo-mi refuses to accept this and her father decides to send her back to the institution which she was released from earlier in the film.

But instead of just mirroring one sister’s inability to process her grief, which is at the center of Sisters, A Tale of Two Sisters offers us one more twist. It is also revealed that Soo-mi is not only seeing her dead sister, but she has split her personality and is also acting as her abusive stepmother. The film’s final sequence offers insight into Soo-mi’s fractured psyche. After the abrupt marriage between her father and stepmother, Soo-yeon discovers the body of her biological mother, who was terminally ill, hanging in the armoire. While attempting to save her mother, the armoire collapses onto Soo-yeon, who is slowly suffocating and being crushed to death. Her stepmother comes to investigate the source of the crash and notices Soo-yeon’s hand reaching out of the tipped armoire but before she can intervene, she is dragged into an argument with Soo-mi, who inadvertently facilitates her sister’s death by arguing with her stepmother. Soo-mi’s grief makes it impossible to accept her sister’s death, because by doing so she must accept her own role in it. To avert this and to demonstrate her love for Soo-yeon, she not only mentally resurrects her sister but she also assumes the identity of her stepmother, acting as both savior and torturer. Soo-mi’s ritual is almost akin to self-flagellation, where she instigates a cycle of imagined abuse and rescue to try and blur a reality in which she was too late.

While the inability to process the death of a loved one is very real, distorting both love and grief allow horror films to explore and subvert traditional gender roles, particularly where women are concerned. Both Danielle and Soo-mi could be considered good sisters because they are devoted to the memory of their dead sisters. They demonstrate the unbreakable bond that sisters can have, but in doing so, they destroy their own view of reality, unleashing violence on both themselves and those around them. Furthermore, by role-playing her dead sister’s savior, Soo-mi is adopting the maternal, nurturing instincts expected of her as a woman, but in the context of A Tale of Two Sisters, this becomes a symptom of her mental illness and eventually leads to her institutionalization. Likewise, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? not only warps sibling rivalry into something unhealthy, but it also allows the Hudson sisters to break free of the stereotypical constraints of both sisterhood and womanhood by allowing them to be abusive and even murderous towards one another. In doing so, the women are able to step away from acceptable gender roles (particularly for the film’s time period), which is something normally confined to masculine depictions of a Cain and Abel-esque brotherhood.

While sisterhood is something to be celebrated and has given us memorable depictions of love and life-long devotions, we can still glean important lessons and commentary from its darker side about our own limits as women who must juggle and adapt to multiple roles within an ever-changing society.