The Brown Bunny

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.

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

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?

While I give the film kudos for a story that I didn't see coming, after the first few minutes of needless (and extremely boring) motorcycle racing, I could see that I was NOT in the hands of a professional editor. The story could have been told far more effectively in half the time--or less. Gallo definitely needed to step away and let a professional editor do his/her thing and mercilessly cut scenes that didn't move the story forward.

While I could see that the author wanted the audience to crawl inside the protagonist, Bud, during the road trip, it didn't take that darned long to do it. Plus, his point of view changed too frequently. If we are inside his skin, then why are we looking at him for minutes in an excruciatingly long and tedious long shot? We need to see what he sees--at least with more consistency. I couldn't get my bearings in terms of what I was supposed to be experiencing and from what viewpoint.

There were other technical problems such as an inconsistency in lighting and shot quality with no apparent reason. And that spotted windshield drove me nuts. If a sign of depression and the carelessness that results from it, I'd have appreciated technique that didn't interfere so much with the visuals. Speaking of visuals, extending driving sequences to cover a song also seemed visually uninspired.

Probably most important, Gallo ignored common expectations of audiences and wanted things his way. I can't believe there wasn't an acceptable compromise. I'm pretty patient when it comes to art and film as art, but don't appreciate my sensibilities and expectations to be pushed beyond the breaking point when there appears to be no artistic justification for it. Too many scenes suffered from too few cuts and ran far too long, engendering more audience frustration than heightened emotionalism. I think this may be a result of an inexperienced and slightly self-indulgent filmmaker.

These technical problems aside, I'm usually able to spot a twist a mile away--but not this time. I wondered why all the women he encountered had flower names but that was just a hint that didn't make much sense until the end. But his name? Bud, as in "flower bud" and "clay" as in a substance in which flowers grow (he couldn't have named the character "dirt" or "mulch," after all) might have been a bit over the top. Again, typical of an immature filmmaker.

Was the encountered women's immediate sexual response to a complete stranger, fantasy on the character's part or the filmmaker's? I'd like to know how many men run into so many compliant females. From what I hear, not many--even when the guy is young, good-looking, and clearly pitiable. In this day and age, we ladies are a bit more cautious than that. Sorry, Vincent. While this may have been believable for males, I don't expect it was for very many female viewers.

I watched the film largely because I wanted to see if and how graphic sex could be incorporated into a drama without lowering it to the level of "high brow pornography." I think the film did a good job on that score, although I'd have preferred the use of a realistic-looking prosthetic such as that used in Boogie Nights. Perhaps the budget didn't allow for it or...who knows? It was certainly an interesting artistic choice and one that leaves me scratching my head in terms of the motive for including it. Symbolically, I'm a bit confused about it.

As effective and surprising as the end twist was, there could have been more in terms of Bud's descent into depression. But then, I'm a psychologist so am aware that symptoms are more than seeking surrogates, crying, and looking forlorn and depressed. Gallo missed, IMO, a chance to show more about what guilt and loss look like and how they affect people. Perhaps, this again, is a result of his inexperience. Personally, I think Redford's "Ordinary People" did a better job of showing a wider breadth of feelings of grief and loss.

Bottom line, although I thought the story had merit and did an excellent job of building to a surprising twist, I think it suffered severely in the journey towards the denouement. I hope Gallo matures and grows as a storyteller and filmmaker as I think he's got something to say worth watching.

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.