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The Brown Bunny review
:. Starring: Vincent Gallo, Chloë Sevigny
:. Script: Vincent Gallo
:. Running Time: 1:40
:. Year: 2003
:. Country: USA
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No big secret: Vincent Gallo suffers from acute narcissism. The boy weaves a very bad yarn, and it's become necessary for someone to pull him out of the existential stagnation in which he bathes. Five years after Buffalo 66, his first very successful and very promising full-length film, Vincent Gallo returns on the screen with the long awaited The Brown Bunny, a film which could just as easily have been called the "Turkey Farce".
The turkey in question is not Monsieur Gallo, who reserves all the jobs by wearing the hats of producer, director, writer, director of photography, camera man and of course lead actor. (Independence or narcissism? Undoubtedly both.) Nope, the turkey is none other than the audience, taken hostage in a road-movie which contains more road than movie.
After a long and tiresome opening about a motorcycle race (in which Bud/Vincent Gallo participates), the audience is locked up in his van. Like the circle symbolized by the laps the drivers make, a metaphor for the life of this hopelessly lost anti-hero, the straight lines of the highways follow, as monotonous as the film itself. During the 90 minutes that follow one helplessly witnesses a promotional tool for the actor-producer-writer-etc. The filmed journal of a cursed rebel? Why not. But does one really need to see Vincent-Bud drive, stop to fill up the tank, sleep at the motel when he's not in his van, drive again, wake up in his underwear, take a shower, keep driving?
The road stretches out, the film unwinds, time passes. And nothing happens. The motorcycle racer must go to California for the next race. On the way, when he's not satisfied driving, waking up in his underwear, to showing off etc, he approaches some women on the road only to abandon them at once. You spoke about a script? Because nevertheless it's necessary to tell a history, somewhere between a sadly ridiculous road trip on a motorcycle past a salt lake and a stop at the gas pump, we learn that the poor guy played by the dashing young man with a somber air lost the love of his life, who was carrying his offspring (a story to add to the pathos) and that since then, he hopelessly seeks to forget her by finding a replacement. In vain, of course.
Therefore, after hundreds of logged miles and more than an hour and half to wonder whether one will be able to hold on till the end (two hours in all), Gallo-Bud ends up in Los Angeles in a motel room. To treat himself to fellatio, administered by his girlfriend's ghost (Chloë Sevigny, expert). Ah yes, our megalomaniac enjoys a beautiful attribute, knows it and lets us know it. One laughs uneasily in front of such a display of self-satisfaction. But it's with sadness that one leaves the room. Like after visiting a neurotic friend on anti-depressants reciting El Desdischado. As in life, the guy easily arouses sympathy, armed with a spontaneous smile, a soft and sensitive voice and a disconcerting sincerity.
There were high expectations. But at the end of the film, before the eyes of the rabbit and the audience, Vincent Gallo goes off road.
Moland Fengkov
Translated into English by Anji Milanovic
 Movie Reviews: 1998 - 2011
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