Near the beginning of the enigmatic The Royal Road, director Jenni Olson, explains in voiceover that watching movies served her as a relief from everyday life, because they allowed her to believe she was the heroes she saw onscreen. Feeling inadequate due to her “tomboy”-ish qualities, she learned how to use film as a way to become someone else, a “mode of survival for me ever since” she adds. From the get-go it’s fascinating to hear the testimony of someone who wishes she was James Stewart’s character in Vertigo, because of the tragedy that follows him around, and perhaps with this tragedy in mind, Olson recounts a doomed, albeit less tragic, love she experienced during her youth.
Besides being a thoughtful rumination on butch identity and queer desire, Olson also pays homage to cinema, and even details the American expansion towards the West, most of which was violent and unfair. If Olson doesn’t specifically compare this injustice to her failed love affair, she doesn’t not do that either, and for that reason The Royal Road feels less like a essay film, and more like a voyeuristic peek at the diary of a young girl as read by her older, more thoughtful self.
The road of the title refers to a path that connected missions in Mexico with those in California, leading all the way to Sonoma. Said road also served as a reminder of the distance that separated Olson from her “Juliet”, and somehow ties in to the life of missionary Junipero Serra, who perhaps serves as some sort of spiritual guide. Olson connects her story to the feeling of loss and regret found not only in Hitchcock’s film, but also Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. and other Los Angeles classics, and considering the film consists exclusively of California vistas shot in 16 mm by Sophia Constantinou, accompanied by Olson’s narration, it’s almost surprising that the film remains so engaging throughout. By the end we realize that Olson isn’t only Kim Novak’s Madeleine from Vertigo possessed by the city she inhabits, she’s also finally become Jimmy Stewart’s Scotty, bewitched and finding it impossible to exorcise himself.
