Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Written and Directed by Gus Van Sant (Psycho)
Starring Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction) as Sissy Hankshaw, Lorainne Bracco (Medicine Man), Keanu Reeves (Speed)
As reviewed by James Brundage
Good serious movies, by their nature, have to have some element of comedy in them. Whether it be satire, irony, or downright slapstick humor, they distract us from the serious nature of the story until we don't know what has happened and end up missing the movie and characters when they end. Of course, you ask, how could a movie with a title like Even Cowgirls Get the Blues be funny at all, let alone serious at the same time? The answer: a beautiful adaptation by Gus Van Sant (who also directs) and a fine performance by Uma Thurman.
In the movie, based on the novel by Tom Robbins, Uma Thurman plays Sissy Hankshaw, the world's best hitchhiker because she has the world's largest thumbs (expressed perfectly in the line, "The Lord God made me to direct traffic."). She has no job most of the time but, when she works, is the model for the Dew Mist feminine hygiene spray. On one modeling assignment her travels takes her to a beauty ranch whose cowgirls are lesbians (without a political agenda! A non-stereotyped Hollywood, at last!). Upon coming to the ranch she finds love with the ringleader Bonanza Jellybean (Rain Phoenix).
Trapped in the same world all of us are, trying to find love, fit in, and get along, she believes that her happiness has been found with these cowgirls, but sadness is just as likely to hit there as anywhere else, and, as the title goes, Even Cowgirls get the Blues.
As just about everything Gus Van Sant does is, the film is excellent as a metaphor movie. In addition, it keeps an interesting intelligence to the cowgirls, all of whom are endowed with a wisdom that surpasses most people's. Like Drugstore Cowboy (1989), Gus Van Sant's other fairly surreal foray, it's inaccessible to the average viewer because of its trippy nature and political riskiness (Drugstore Cowboy was a film about a crew of dope fiends, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is a film about lesbians that can offend it's target group.) If you can actually get past the oddities, though, it's one of the funniest films you'll ever see, but one that will leave you wishing that cowgirls didn't have to get the blues.
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