The Brown Bunny

Vincent Gallo's THE BROWN BUNNY is a really creepy and weird film. I love weird, challenging films, but this was a bit too much for me. Much of the film is Vincent Gallo driving to a bike race remembering his girlfriend along the way. The final scene with him meeting up with his girlfriend chilled me to the bone. It was just twisted. While the film looks appropriately gritty and grimy at times, it is way too hard to sit through all the way to the end. I felt like a creep for watching. The film scared me in a really bad way. Vincent Gallo sure has talent! This is definitely a well made film. However, Vincent Gallo seems to have made this film for nobody but for himself. This is a highly experimental film that I don't recommend except for those people who are cinematically adventurous. It's an effective piece of work, but it's not really my thing. Adults only.

After racing in New Hampshire, the lonely motorcycle racer Bud Clay (Vincent Gallo) drives his van in a five-day journey to California for the next race. Along his trip, he meets fan, lonely women, prostitutes, but he leaves them since he is actually looking for the woman he loves, Daisy (Chloë Sevigny). He goes to her house and leaves a note telling where he is lodged. Out of the blue, Daisy appears in his hotel room and soon he learns why he cannot find her.

"The Brown Bunny" is an independent very low budget movie by Vincent Gallo. The plot is developed in slow pace and is dull and boring in many moments. The revelation of Daisy's secret is totally unexpected. However the movie has become famous only because of the unnecessary fellatio of Chloë Sevigny, maybe to satisfy Vincent Gallo's ego, since does not add anything but a polemic scene to this movie in a poor hype. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): Not available on DVD or Blu-Ray

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."

Okay, "The Brown Bunny" is a 7 minute movie that is dragged on for 93 painful minutes. How does this happen? Well, it's pretty clear to me that Vincent Gallo really likes the look of his own stubbly face from really close up. I came to this conclusion when I realized it accounts for about twenty to twenty-five minutes of the movie. Then you add in that Vincent Gallo owns a very nice motorcycle...that he likes to show off. The motorcycle doesn't actually take up to much of the screen time (unfortunately), but it does allow some kind of premise. What really bugs me is that there are people who think that this movie was deep. It's not, I can see how the basic premise could be turned into something deep and artistic. But a bad motorcycle driver who has a thing for chics named after flowers and imagines his dead drug addict girlfriend giving him head is not deep by itself, and it doesn't help just to have long scenes of traffic and a not very attractive stubbly mans face. The only reason this movie has gotten any recognition whatsoever is the shock value of showing a blowjob in a non-skin flick. So once again, WTF?

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.