The Thing Called Love

The Thing Called Love (1993) is a Peter Bogdanovich music drama you can watch online on iFILM. Aspiring singer Miranda rolls into Nashville with a guitar, a couple of songs and a stubborn plan to make it in country music.

At open-mic nights in the legendary Bluebird Cafe she falls in with fellow hopefuls: the charming, restless James, easygoing Kyle and quick-witted Linda Lou. A romance flares up and starts tangling both the music and the friendships. River Phoenix plays James, a gifted kid weighed down by his own drifting; Samantha Mathis, Dermot Mulroney and a very young Sandra Bullock round out the circle.

For Bogdanovich it's a story about the price of a dream — the stage gives back exactly as much as it takes. It was one of River Phoenix's final films, released the year he died, which lends the melancholy on screen a different weight. Plenty of live country, zero gloss. Stream The Thing Called Love (1993) online on iFILM.