THE BROWN BUNNY (NC-17) **1/2

 

Directed by Vincent Gallo. 92 minutes.

Starring Vincent Gallo and Chloe Sevigny. Released by Grey Daisy Films.

 

The controversial new film from Vincent Gallo, The Brown Bunny, is a poster child for the editing machine. Film editors are often the salvation of directors, as movies are often saved or destroyed in the editing room. Gallo’s film is a notorious example. At the Cannes Film Festival of 2002, Gallo’s film received one of the worst receptions of any film in the festival’s history. Roger Ebert said that the film was the worst he had seen, which led to an amusing spat between director and critic. Now, a year and a half has passed and Gallo has intelligently removed over twenty minutes of footage from the film for a releasable cut. I have not seen the original version, but I would imagine that twenty more minutes of The Brown Bunny would go on my list of unnecessary things. That is not to say that Gallo’s film is a bad one. It has actually emerged as a fairly good one; its notorious climax has been trimmed, as not to make the scene gratuitous.

 

There are a lot of words that can and have been used to describe this film: sparse, elegiac, pretentious, beautiful, entrancing, arrogant, threadbare, intimate. All of these words are accurate descriptions. Bunny has a visual style that is part Dogme 95 and part 1970s independent filmmaking, though unfortunately Dennis Hopper’s notoriously bad The Last Movie comes to mind, and focuses very little on plot and, as a matter of fact, very little on character, mostly going for style and mood, which works for much of the film. Gallo springs a surprise on us at the end, which results in the entire film being centered around plot, though we do not discover this until this point.

 

The film opens with an exceptionally long shot of motorcycles racing around a track. Gallo plays Bud Clay, a racer, who is on a road trip to California to take part in another race. He drives a large black van, which collects squashed bugs on the windshield. Bud looks quite sullen as he moseys along U.S. highways. This is understandable. He hopes to reconnect with his estranged girlfriend, Daisy (Chloe Sevigny), but, in the meantime, attempts making connections with other women, most of which lead to awkward moments in which he fumbles and is barely audible. The first is a woman behind the counter of a gas station, which he manages to successfully convince to accompany him on his cross country odyssey; the second an older woman at a rest stop; and finally, a hooker.

 

In between, there are a lot of moments in which Gallo stares off into space or the audience gets some entrancing shots of highways, at day and night and in rain and shine, as Clay ambles towards the west coast. Along the way, he visits Daisy’s parents, who have also lost track with their daughter and share another awkward moment with Bud. The highway shots are lovely, accompanied by, no less, Gordon Lightfoot music. The scenes of Clay in the van are often hypnotic, even haunting, and are amongst the best in the movie. Unfortunately, they are weighted down by endless moments in which nothing much really happens. Bud has to drive around a block twice to decide whether or not he will talk to a prostitute. There is a scene in which he bangs on Daisy’s door in California, heads back to the van, then bangs again. All to no avail. The film, at 92 minutes, is already quite short and, had it had been edited more, it would be too short. My wish is that Gallo had substituted something in the place of the more than a few endless moments of Bud killing time or staring off into space. At least give us some more of the lovely highway shots.

 

Then comes the notorious hotel scene in which Daisy shows up and gives Bud a blowjob in a hardcore, graphic sex scene that took some nerve on the part of Gallo and some even greater nerve on the part of Sevigny. A pretentious move on Gallo’s part, you might argue? Sure, but the scene makes Bud’s character seem pathetic and defeated, in a sense, rather than sexual and it is not the least bit titillating, a trait that would have sunk the film. The scene, originally ten minutes, has been cut to three, so we only actually see a few moments of Gallo’s erect penis in close-up and Sevigny performing oral sex. What comes next is even more shocking. The film culminates in a sort of 360 degree plot twist that puts the rest of the film into a completely different context. What could have made the movie crash and burn actually gives it a different angle, provides a deeper meaning into the context of the story (if we agree to call it that), and actually one-ups the sex scene in shock value. It is a bold move, one that makes The Brown Bunny better than it should be.

 

At the end of the day, however, Gallo’s film is hit or miss. There is much going for it- the cinematography, the beautiful scenery, the powerful ending, Sevigny’s performance, and the spell that the film holds over us. If Gallo had either edited it down just slightly more or found replacement footage for some of the more endless scenes, then Bunny might have been a much stronger work. There are scenes here that belong in a great film. But then, we have scenes of Gallo and some engineers testing the wheels of his motorcycle that seem to drag on into eternity and The Brown Bunny just misses the mark.