*note - don't read this if you don't want a surprise ending to be given away*

I had heard of Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" many months ago because of it's extremely poor reception at Cannes. It only resurfaced in my general realm of knowledge because I heard of what is now very "water-cooler": the explicit oral sex scene between Gallo and his co-star.

The combination of these two things was an irresistable draw for me to see the film. I'm going to be a man and own up to what few others will: 80% of the reason I went to see "The Brown Bunny" was to see Vincent Gallo get blown. I'm a 25 year old gay man; I'm easily titilated. And Vincent Gallo is just one of the super-hottest men I've ever seen. If he ever wants to relive the scene, he can track me down.

None-the-less, I am also a huge fan of independant film (and Gallo's former work.) So I went into The Brown Bunny with an itch for some cheap sexual thrills and the potential of being surprised. What proceeded was me in a mostly empty, small arthouse theater feeling extremely let-down and bored for the first seventy minutes of the film.

Don't get me wrong: many of the things people are going to complain about from this film didn't bother me in the slightest. I don't mind akward, shaky or amaturish camera angles. I don't mind extended periods of silence or a lack of an ongoing soundtrack. As I just said, I'm an indie-film fanatic. I revel in these things.

What I DO loathe is a lack of character development. It's one thing to get nothing in the way of characters when you're seeing some action flick, but when you see a low budget indie picture, it's what you're there for. I read other reviews of this film praising Gallo for his depiction of a "sad" "lonely" blah-blah-blah man who we feel sympathy for.

And to his credit, ol' Vinnie has the pouty puppy dog eyes down to a tee. But anybody can put on a sad face; it's the motivation behind it all that makes us interested. And I spent 70 minutes wondering "What the hell is this guy upset about?"

Herein lies the film's hugest and most upsetting fault: we are left to fill in the blanks for ourselves far, far too much. Gallo plays Bud, a motorcycle racing kinda-guy who is (apparently) far away from home at a race. He loses, and loads his bike into his black van and heads off down the road.

He comes upon a gas station, loads up the tank, and inside meets the homely Violet (Anna Vareschi.) He tells her he's off to California, and she mentions that she'd love to go there. "Do you wanna come with me?" he asks. "I don't even know you," she replies. "Please? Please? Please come with me?" This constitutes the longest stretch of dialogue we hear for at least fifteen minutes.

For whatever reason, Violet abandons her job (she tapes a note to an Aunt and Uncle to the door) and jumps into the van with Bud. They stop by her place so she can get some of her belongings. He kisses her and tells her she has a pretty face. Then, while she's inside, he drives away and leaves her. I have to say that, personally, I was struck by the cruelty of this act. Violet is not a "pretty girl;" she's obviously stuck in some dead end job provided by her family, and suddenly she's up and abandoned it all for the spontaniously provided dream of fleeing to Hollywood with a handsome (did I mention pouty-eyed?) stranger. I truly hurt for her.

We *do* see confliction in Bud's eyes over the near-encounter. He obviously liked Violet and there's some reason he couldn't proceed with her. His next stop is at the former childhood home of Daisy. Here we FINALLY get some background. Through a very akward conversation with Daisy's elderly parents we discover that Bud grew up next door. However, they really don't remember him, despite the fact that, according to Bud, he and Daisy live together in a house in California that her parents visited. In fact, the mother comments that Daisy hasn't called her. "I don't know why she hasn't called. I wish I knew." Some people have commented that she says Daisy hasn't called "in years," but having just seen the movie 10 minutes ago, I am certain she did not. This is very important because of what happens later...

Bud takes off from the house (where, coincidentally, Daisy's brown bunny is living, in case you wondered about the title.) He stops at a rest stop to get a soda and a woman (Cheryl Tiegs) is sitting at a picnic table. He sits down with her and they make out. It's a desperate sort of making out; they both look frantic and depressed about it all, like, "Oh poor us, let's console each other and make out." But there's no actual REASON for the scene other than the fact that Bud walks away after several minutes (without even a goodbye, in fact they don't speak at all.) It furthers the idea that, for some reason, Bud can't consumate his advances towards women.

By-the-by, the rest-stop-woman's name? As shown on her purse, it's Lilly. Get it? Bud and his girls Violet, Daisy and Lilly. I'm sure Gallo was going for some kind of meaning there - searching for the perfect flower or some such - but it's fairly juvenille. Now Bud gets back in his car and heads towards L.A.

Shortly after arriving Bud passes by a prostitute named - da-ding! - Rose. She entices him to take her into the van; he says he just wants to have lunch, but she reminds him she's gotta "make my money." We cut to them driving around; Rose is munching on fries. Abruptly Bud pulls over and drops her off, paying her anyway. Okay, we get it: whatever it is that happened has made it IMPOSSIBLE for Bud to be with a woman. Sheesh.

He gets there, and drops his motorcycle off at a shop. He goes to a house and rings the bell, asking for Daisy. It's our first confirmation that he was either lying to her parents, or not telling the whole story. (In fact, I was wondering, why did he even visit them? It was a bit as if he stopped by because he had something to say but never said it.) Someone yells "Nobody's there," so he leaves Daisy a note.

He checks into a hotel and leaves a message with the front desk that Daisy might stop by. It's a truly pathetic gesture, and since we've come to suspect at this point that something has gone wrong between the two of them (and that this is the drive behind all of his failed attempts with the two ladies before) we do, for a moment, see a genuinely pitiable act.

However, surprise-surprise! As Bud steps out of the bathroom, who is waiting in the room but Daisy? (Actually, we knew she would get there eventually because she has to show up and orally pleasure him, right?) Looking like she's been shopping with Laurie Partridge (what era is this supposed to be set in?), she rushes past him almost immediately because she says she has to pee. Instead, she smokes up in the bathroom. (I have to admit, I couldn't figure out what she was smoking, so I'm not certain if it was crack or pot.)

She comes back out and an akward dialogue ensues. It's almost startling, because although there are pauses, it is the steadiest and lengthiest stream of dialogue since the film started. What's surprising is that she seems apologetic. She seems to be coming from the point of view of someone who has made a mistake and wants to be forgiven. She begs to hug Bud, sit in his lap and kiss him. Bud is the one who is reticent and slowly gives over to the idea.

She leaves to smoke up again, and comes back out and essentially seduces Bud into forgiving her (though we still don't know for what.) She keeps saying how she loves him and has always, and he keeps saying "No, you don't." Eventually she gets him to kiss her and he takes off her top and pulls down her bra. They get into a position for lovemaking, but he stands back up.

He pushes her down onto the floor and she begins to mouth over the front of his jeans, bringing him to erection. This is, obviusly, where "the scene" occurs. I'm not going to describe it in glorious detail, but to neglect commenting on it would be stupid. To say the least, Gallo has an enormous penis...that is, of course, if it IS his penis. Though both actors insist what is being witnesses is real, there is the distinct possibility that it is not. The penis comes out of his pants in an already erect state; through the length of the act he keeps a firm grip of it at the base, so it is completely ostensible that it is a prosthetic member, however convincing it looks. I can't help but not that his moment of climax occurs in Daisy's mouth, and when he emerges, there isn't a trace of what there should be lingering on the penis (was that clear enough?) On the other side of the coin, when he pulls his underwear back up over it, it remains firmly tented in such a way that would be hard to achieve unless the prosthetic was extremely well attached.

Does any of this matter? Maybe not to most, but as we all know, plenty of people are going to this film JUST to see this sex scene. So I'd be relatively P.O.'ed if it WAS fake all along. What IS vital about the sex scene, however, is what occurs while it's happening. As Daisy practically chokes on what she's doing, Bud eagerly feeds her mouth while grunting out things like "Do you like that in your mouth? You'll never s*ck another man's c*ck again, will you?" It's the agains that seem to clarify something; we now believe that Daisy cheated and broke Bud's heart.

Once the act is over Bud (almost immediately after orgasm) retreats to the bed and begins to cry. Daisy crawls in next to him, coddling him like a child. What is unveiled over the next several minutes (through the use of some flashback) is unsettling to say the least. Apparently Daisy was carrying Bud's baby. She got high at a party where she was raped by three men while unconcious. Bud walked in on it, thought that Daisy was cheating on him, and just left. When he returned Daisy was dead.

Wha-wha-whatchu say, EasterBradfordMovieReviewer? You heard me. She's not even there. The entire sexual experience was a fantasy, a further attempt for Bud to escape what we, the audience, knew nothing about until this very moment.

This would normally be where I would say something "Now all of the pieces fall into place," but as I've said, we just weren't provided with enough pieces to really be anything but blindsided by this revelation. It's doubly disturbing by the fact that less than two minutes ago we were watching two people have aggressive oral sex; and now we understand that it was a fantasy driven masturbatory session Bud was using to displace his pain. And then the movie's over.

To recap: Bud loses a race, meets and kisses a girl, leaves the girl, talks to some old folks, meets and kisses another girl, meets another girl and leaves her, checks into a hotel and masturbates. Without compromise this is, at least visually, what occurs in "The Brown Bunny." What fills the other 80 minutes of the film is so diffcult to watch it makes you question whether the big surprise ending was worth it.

There is so much footage of Bud doing nothing. SO. MUCH. And I can only refer you to my previous comments about how I'm an indie film fan. I THRIVE on movies with footage of people doing nothing; of landscapes passing by outside of car windows and the like. The point is, anything CAN be interesting. But just filming something doesn't make it noteworthy.

Take, for example, the 2002 Gus Van Sant film "Gerry." It's 100 minutes is filled with almost nothing but lush panoramic views of the desert. It is the way it is filmed coupled with the invovled character's ongoing drama that makes the film so interesting. Here, because Gallo has provided us with no character motivation (and no information on which to understand what is really going on,) it is nothing more than blah.

I was tempted, when pondering this review, to say that the big ending makes the movie worth it. But it doesn't. It is one thing to go back and say, for instance, how horrible it is when Daisy's mother says Daisy hasn't called. "I wish I knew why." At the end of the movie we know why: Daisy is dead. But it is not the job of a movie-goer to backtrack. We should feel things in the moment, and at that moment the line is said all we feel is that Daisy's a creep for not calling up her mom and pop.

"The Brown Bunny" is not a good movie because it just isn't a movie. It's an inkling of a concept gone horribly awry. It has no message, and it's characters have no purpose. The entire and single emotion of the film is one of loss and pain that we, as the viewer, don't really understand or sympathize with until the last five minutes of the movie.

Fortunately, as I said above, 80% of the reason I saw it was to see Vincent Gallo whip out his d*ck, so my final critique is: d*ck, 5 stars; movie, no stars.

Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age