“THE BROWN BUNNY” (2003)

Starring: Vincent Gallo & Chloë Sevigny
Written & Directed by Vincent Gallo

Polly Staffle Rating: ***

You know the parts they cut out of movies, like someone driving in a car, entering or leaving a building, boring every day stuff that even if it’s in a film, it’s never in real time? That’s what the first hour of “The Brown Bunny” consists of and not much else. It really is quite a shame because the last thirty minutes of the film contains quite the powerhouse ending.

This movie is obviously Vincent Gallo’s baby all the way. Not only did he write, direct, produce and star in it, he has nine other credits on the film including cinematography and editing. I’ll admit he is extremely talented and I loved his “Buffalo 66.” What goes wrong here though is he obviously needed more people on the project to steer him away from the singular vision in his head.

Gallo wanted to make a work of art, as opposed to a film. He wanted us to get inside the head of his character Bud Clay and we do. We feel his loneliness and his boredom. We feel his desperation and devastation.

Not only do we feel his pain, it’s like we are in the car with him for a long road trip and we have absolutely nothing to talk about. We see the side of his face while he drives down the street for several minutes at a time. We see the road as he drives for another couple of minutes. He travels through night, rain, Las Vegas and more.

He does make stops on his travels across the country and a little bit of dialogue is exchanged, but not enough to make up for the long stretches of highway and sky. Some of the encounters are pretty good. He misses the love of his life. Something has happen between them. He visits her parents and tries replacing her with a convenience store worker and a prostitute. But nothing seems to help.

Then the last thirty minutes set in. We meet this love of his life played by Chloë Sevigny. Much hype has been made about the pornographic act they perform in the film, but that’s not what makes the ending so brilliant. It adds some shock value, but without it the scene, which is just the two alone in a hotel room, is still very touching and heartbreaking. Bud is mad at himself for something he didn’t do in their past. He loves Daisy more than anything, but because of an event that happened they can not be together as a couple.

My girlfriend fell asleep during the boring first hour of this film and I finished it by myself. The next day I told her she has to watch the ending. She did and commented that if more porn had the substance of this movie, women might be able to enjoy adult films more than they do.

I’m sure many others didn’t make it that far into the movie. From what I understand this is the edited down version. There was an additional half hour of driving originally that has now been cut out. A little bit more of tinkering and editing and Gallo would have himself a masterpiece. It wouldn’t really take that much. One of the trailers on the DVD uses split screen showing the highway on one side while other footage plays on the other half of the screen. Something as simple as that through the movie would probably do wonders.

- CCF, February 2006