The Brown Bunny

Stripped of all pretense, this movie is nothing more than a long, boring, pointless self-indulgent ego-trip. Vincent Gallo wants us to think he is a true artiste (you know... the type with the "e" at the end). But, how he thought anyone but him would find this entertaining or even thought-provoking is beyond me. Sure, you'll have your film-school drop outs that will label anything not Hollywood a masterpiece. But, let's be honest, if you had to sit through this pretentious snorefest one more time or watch "Raiders of the Lost Arc" for the 1000th time, which would you do? Heck, I am still convinced this was just a slick scheme by Vincent Gallo to get his ex-girlfriend to perform fellatio on him on screen. If that was his sole intent, then this film was a rousing success. If he actually thinks he made a good film, then he can keep pretending.

I saw a cut of the film on VHS a long time ago. I'm not sure if this was the Cannes version or not.

Many months later, I saw the film, again, in Santa Monica at the Nuart. Gallo was there to do q&a afterwards. I need to talk for a second about the groups of girls (young women) that were waiting to see, touch, taste, take a little bit of Gallo away with them. It made me feel so sad. Los Angeles does something to people. It hollows them out, at least a little bit. Then I snuck inside the theater and saw the empty cold movie theater till I was hassled to leave by the theater manager and get back in line outside.

All this happened before the screening. I watched the film at times sneaking glances with my best friend worried that the crowd was going to not get it and attack Gallo. For the most part they did. I wonder sometimes if people don't get a little more stupid in crowds. I think this was the case.

I really didn't know what to think of the film. I walked around afterwards wondering what the hell had I been watching. I knew why. The why is always because I believe in film as art and that it should be judged that way. But what had I been watching?

Now months later I think I'm a little more clear what that was. Gallo is a gorgeous technical filmmaker. He takes great leaps in his films in story assuming that the folks in the dark (the audience) is smarter than him. Sadly, these days most people feel that since they paid 11 dollars that the director is smarter than them. So they expect to be treated like a child and talked to in that way. Gallo is sadly living in this world and making films in it. He's more optimistic than I am, I guess.

I guess, if you couldn't find a review in the paragraphs above, that my review is, "well done, Gallo. it's not for everyone but none of can be and make movies like this."

Watching The Brown Bunny is like taking the most boring road trip ever accompanied by the most unlikable bloke imaginable, after which he gets a blow job and you don't.

Directed by and starring Vincent Gallo, this self-indulgent art-house snooze-fest follows motorcycle racer Bud Clay as he drives from New Hampshire to California, with brief encounters with several women along the way. When he gets to Los Angeles, he meets up with old flame Daisy Lemon (Chloë Sevigny), who gets a shot of protein to the back of the throat in the film's infamous un-simulated oral sex scene, after which we learn the tragic truth about how their relationship ended.

99% tedious shots of Gallo driving down highways, filmed through the windscreen, badly framed and frequently out of focus, and 1% Sevigny slurping sausage, this is precisely the type of unmitigated garbage that gives arthouse cinema a bad rep. It's ultimately a study of a man struggling with guilt and grief, which is all well and good except for the fact that it is also utterly boring and ugly to look at for most of the time. If it hadn't been for the fact that an established actress performs fellatio for reals, I suspect that The Brown Bunny would never have seen the light of day.

If you can endure a 90 minute portrait of brooding self loathing with virtually no dialog and uninspired cinematography, this film is for you. The notorious scene with Daisy is incongruous. Perhaps, I am dense, but in my view, the emperor has no clothes. To be successful, this film should have elicited a strong interest in the lead character. But in the end, you have learned little about someone who is shallow and unappealing. This film portrays the journey of a motorcyclist tormented by demons vaguely hinted at in mysterious stops he makes in route. You see that he is attracted and repulsed by women. (Cheryl Tiegs, for those of you old enough to remember her from the 1970s is perfect in what amounts to a cameo.) But his encounters with women are so fleeting and glancing that you learn little until the end of the journey. Then, what you learn is too trite to support your having endured the trip with him. I believe Vincent Gallo had a serious idea, but the idea is unrealized.

The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo's latest travelogue of sorrow, charts the journey of the sort of disenchanted hero one comes across in the obituary page of their local paper. America, as seen through the window of Gallo's hollow black van, merges into a singular one-story wasteland of Main Streets lined with reds, whites and blues. Here, where many entertainment-seeking viewers will have long left the theater, one suddenly realizes that Gallo's is not a simple indie flick; but instead, a floating canvas able to tap into a higher meditative consciousness within the viewer. By creating a film of singular vision perhaps only attainable by doing what few directors have the tenacity or perseverance to undertake, Gallo has achieved what has eluded many an 'independent' director: a film created almost solely by the director. Gallo's characters are ethereal spirits cast upon a harsh, unfriendly world. Chloë Sevigny, in yet another hypnotic role as Daisy, redefines the modern insistence on two-dimensional antagonists. For Bud, Gallo playing the sort of brooding innocent Marlon Brando once jarred audiences with, the American tapestry becomes a home movie of the banality of human existence. Cheryl Tiegs, the popular Seventies model, makes an unexpected cinematic comeback, delivering a beautifully poetic performance as a lonely woman in a nowhere rest stop. In a sterile, white motel room, Gallo's film culminates with a scene of erotic abandon. Yet here again, the Audience, as an extension of Bud's own painful emptiness, will find no release. The arid lovemaking of this star-crossed couple, in a room lit like an operating room before a lobotomy, appears so natural that at its' heart could only be the sheer necessity of moral and emotional collapse seeking salvation. To see The Brown Bunny requires the sort of patience and reverence reserved for museums and galleries. For those few who choose, it can open the heart and the soul as only a masterpiece can.