The Brown Bunny (2003)

Directed by: Vincent Gallo | 90 minutes | drama | Actors: Vincent Gallo, Chloë Sevigny, Cheryl Tiegs, Elizabeth Blake, Anna Vareschi, Mary Morasky

Vincent Gallo in a film he directs, in which he is director of photography and protagonist, we are no longer falling from our chairs, but if it is not enough Gallo in ‘The Brown Bunny’ makes no effort whatsoever for his protagonist attributing a trait we don’t know from the maker himself and has no serious opponent except Chloë Sevigny in the last twenty minutes of the film; when it turns out that Sevigny – his ex-girlfriend – is also playing a lost lover in ‘The Brown Bunny’, the temptation is great to label Gallo’s creations ‘real life’, but the filmmaker always has one trump card : he determines the dramatic rules; whether it really concerns himself is irrelevant.

Gallo has had a hard time with critics since the release of ‘The Brown Bunny’, and partly asked for it, with an unfinished version at Cannes 2003 and a movie poster showing a woman orally pleasing a man. Still, he doesn’t deserve to be glossed over, because he actually makes very innocent, if serious, films about the inability to feel and the desperate loneliness that results; the first serious film with a pipe scene in America, for example, is incorrectly given the genre designation ‘adult’, because portraying genitals during sexual acts has been an accepted fact in arthouse circles for some time. Gallo shows sex like Bruno Dumont in films like ‘l’Humanité’ and ‘Twentynine Palms’, disconsolate but less cynical; there’s nothing obscene about the fellatio, except that it’s part of a sadistic fantasy about a lost loved one.

Gallo demands patience from the viewer; what he has to do with ‘The Brown Bunny’ – which lacks the versatility and originality of his debut ‘Buffalo ’66’, but manages to touch it at times – remains unclear for a long time. Motorcycle racer in transit Bud Clay picks up a very young gas station attendant (Anna Vareschi) and before she can pack her bags, he’s gone; Bud Clay begins to spontaneously kiss an unknown woman (Cheryl Tiegs) along the highway and sets off again with the northern sun; Bud Clay picks up a hooker (Elizabeth Blake) to eat french fries and ends up alone in his hotel room. In between, he visits the parents of Daisy, the woman later in the film portrayed as his ex-lover, in a lingering scene that resembles Billy’s visit to his parents in ‘Buffalo ’66’.
However, these events are nothing compared to the drawn-out atmospheric images: traditional shots of ‘the road’, typical travel actions such as refueling and eating and especially a lot of Bud Clay, nothing else. Minimalist narcissism is too modest, narcissistic minimalism comes closer. Gallo seems to be mostly looking at himself in ‘The Brown Bunny’; sometimes we as viewers even disappear into the head of the riding Bud Clay and see his field of view for a long time.

Drop all preconceptions about Vincent Gallo and this film and what remains is a portrait of a self-centered but needy young man who is powerless to form emotional bonds. It is now Gallo’s hobbyhorse and shows signs of wear, but still has a load. It is only released in the final minutes, after which everything comes together. The enchanting Chloë Sevigny, who in her playing minutes is the center of a harrowing feat of dysfunctional love, gave ‘The Brown Bunny’ the benefit of the doubt and that has proved to be no recklessness. This movie is hard to do without her.