Walt (Dean Stockwell) discovers his brother, Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), has been found after disappearing four years earlier. Travis has been wandering the American Southwest on an obscure personal quest that he won't reveal, even to Walt. After some coaxing, Travis agrees to go to his brother's house to see the son (Hunter Carson) he abandoned. The boy barely remembers his biological father, having been raised to think of his uncle and Aunt Ann (Aurore Clément) as his parents. Ann is terrified Travis will want to take Hunter away, but does tell him where he can begin looking for his estranged wife, Jane (Nastassja Kinski), who is technically the one who dropped Hunter off at their doorstep four years ago. Jane hasn't been back but she has been depositing money every month into an account for Hunter, which Travis uses to trace her to a peep show where she works. (For the younger crowd, this was the precursor to Cam Girls.) With the safety of one-way glass, Travis finally shares the inciting incident of this film.
This is not going to be a film for everyone. It was barely a film for me. Wim Wenders directs with such a sympathetic eye, the resulting betrayal is that much deeper. Stanton and Stockwell are consummate professionals, as always, but I was pleasantly surprised by how good Kinski's Southern accent was. I wasn't expecting it. Only two years prior, she was in Cat People with zero accent. An underrated actress.
It is a movie that deals in trauma and psychological scars, but also in finding a way back and making amends. If that sounds like something you're interested in, it is currently streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel.
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