Male hustlers, weird johns, dead fathers, lost mothers and homage to Shakespeare in the overcast American Northwest. Writer/director Gus Van Sant pours a lot of heart into his third feature, which makes up for some storytelling risks that crash in mid-flight. He forces Henry IV quotes into the dialogue with a serious shoehorn. Characters who spoke naturally in one scene suddenly converse in Shakespearean cloth-of-gold in the next and the effect is distracting (and it doesn’t make the film’s sometimes slow pace any easier to take). The film really gets going when the characters get going, from Portland to Italy, to look for sensitive narcoleptic lost boy River Phoenix’s runaway mother. His companion is Keanu Reeves, the slumming son of a wealthy politician and who hangs out among the male prostitutes to rebel. River is needy and Keanu is distant, but I like to think that in real life they both bonded over growing up with weird first names. The film’s lingering effect is that of painful longing. The most compelling character is River Phoenix’s. He’s the lowest and most lonely, in need of the sort of friend that you have the sinking feeling that he’s never going to find. The film rides highest when it dwells in his solitude.