Mala Noche

Mala Noche (1987) is Gus Van Sant's feature debut, shot on grainy black-and-white 16mm in Portland, Oregon — and you can watch it online on iFILM. Walt runs a corner convenience store and has fixated on Johnny, a young Mexican migrant worker who has no interest in returning the feeling.

The language barrier is real — Johnny barely speaks English — but Walt pursues anyway. What he gets instead of reciprocity is a loose triangle with Johnny's friend, and each move Walt makes shifts the power further out of his hands. The film doesn't romanticize the dynamic. The gap between these two men — linguistic, economic, cultural — drives the obsession rather than resolving it.

Van Sant made the film for around $25,000, adapting Walt Curtis's autobiographical prose. It's the project that eventually got him to Elephant and Paranoid Park. The handheld camerawork lurches around Portland's margins, and nothing here is tidied up for comfort — which is precisely what makes it worth watching. Stream Mala Noche (1987) online on iFILM.