'The Brown Bunny' review

What is there to say about this film that hasn't already been said?

By Ling Ma
Published: September 16th, 2004 | 4:28pm

What is there to say about The Brown Bunny that hasn’t already been said? Among the first and foremost tidbits mentioned, it is written, directed, and produced — and other things — by Vincent Gallo. He’s a filmmaker/musician/former painter whose duplicitous public persona (complete with antisemitic comments and self-profession of being a Nixon-admiring Republican), publicity stunts (his notorious feud with Roger Ebert, the Sunset Boulevard billboard ad, and so on), and his undoubtedly charismatic previous work, Buffalo ’66, have all aligned to render him the arguable christ figure of the indie scene.

Mr. Gallo’s reputation precedes him. Being alternately obnoxious, self-effacing, and demanding, it’s easy to see how critics’ concern with his narcissism and ego has taken such precedence in reviews of The Brown Bunny.

The plot itself is easy to empirically summarize: Gallo portrays Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer who takes a westbound road trip across the States. Along the way, he visits the family of a girl he used to know, plays with some animals at a pet shop, stops to drive his motorcycle around, and later takes it to the shop. He also has small, non-sexual encounters with a series of women. All of these incidents are interspersed with lengthy shots of the road as he drives. These sequences are trying, dull, and at times quite lovely, with a soundtrack that includes Ted Curson and Gordon Lightfoot. All of this leads to the infamous scene in which Chloe Sevigny, as Bud’s former lover Daisy, administers fellatio to Gallo.

It’s here that the movie gets a lot better.

I know I'm not winning any credibility here in claiming that the best scene of the film incidentally happens to be the fellatio scene. Be that as it may, Gallo has kept his character’s interactions to a minimum, and what is lacking throughout much of the film are more tangible, explicit interactions between Bud and other characters. It’s true that The Brown Bunny isn’t trying to be that kind of talk-y film. It’s meant to be contemplative, moody, and severely introspective. And that’s a shame, because the characters Gallo play in his films are at their most potent, most compelling, most revealing when engaging with others.

Likewise, the solemn sincerity with which Sevigny’s Daisy interacts with Bud easily lends credit to Gallo’s performance. What might solely come across as incessant, passive-aggressive neediness and introverted bitching — as it sometimes does — is legitimized as aching sorrow and pain once Sevigny is in the same room as Gallo, playing off his character. Together, they share a palpable emotional dynamic. Daisy slowly insinuates herself into Bud’s trust and illuminates his character, with its vulnerabilities and insecurities, in a way the audience has wanted to be, but has yet to be, privy to. It works.

Unfortunately, a film is the sum of its parts. The scene with Sevigny is too little, too late, to render the film as a whole as a strong work. With the exception of some final scenes, much of The Brown Bunny is moping misery at its most cinematically and technically generic: spaces of silences, desolate landscapes, and dispensable characters who drift in and drift out.

The linear narrative structure comes across as amateurish. Lengths of dull, repetitive monotony leading up to a revelation in the last few minutes isn’t anything that hasn’t been done before by film school students. The obvious, unoriginal structure gives the impression that the film is overly reliant on its last few scenes in redeeming the earlier majority of scenes as interesting in retrospect. That’s not so much good filmmaking as it is easy sensationalism.

What else is there to say about The Brown Bunny? Just this: sorry, Mr. Gallo. I love your enigma, but not your movie.