Upon entering a film at Cannes, it certainly helps for marketing purposes if a film maker can come away with a Jury Prize, an honorable mention or (Fingers crossed) a Palme D'Or. Not horrible press. Really hostile, career ending, pill swallowing press. What Vincent Gallo received at last year's festival for his sophomore film THE BROWN BUNNY was a critical evisceration, a cavalcade of scathing rhetoric usually reserved for Middle Eastern leaders or Michael Moore. Pedophiles don't even get this kind of scrutiny. Alas, THE BROWN BUNNY probably ended up receiving more publicity than eventual Palme D'Or winner "Elephant" which, sadly, died box office wise as ghastly a death as Gwyneth Paltrow in "Seven" and now, by sheer admirable persistence and pains in the editing room, journeys sixteen months of snickering speculation after its disastrous premiere only to galactically suck.

THE BROWN BUNNY doesn't entirely suck, mind you, although Chloe Sevigny certainly does (More of this later). Written, directed, produced, edited, photographed by and starring the embattled Gallo, THE BROWN BUNNY is a lot of many things. First and foremost, pic is an often affecting meditation on solitude, a quiet study on the personal paralysis of an individual who doesn't know how to come to terms with a soul decimating loss. Indeed, the child like emotional vulnerability Gallo frankly displays is as haunting as it is tedious.

Unfortunately, THE BROWN BUNNY is also often an excruciating exercise in solipsistic, self indulgence. Indeed, the self congratulatory degree of sexual prowess Gallo frankly exhibits is as groundless as it is narcissistic. We know the actor is model good looking, but Jesus. The sincerity of Gallo's brooding sensitivity, coupled by pic's rambling, repetitive passages of open roads leading to a dislocated nowhere (We get that Gallo's character is existentially adrift, but Christ) and puzzling sexual encounters which reveal a great raging nothing make for a uniquely polarizing experience.

Gallo stars as Bud Clay, a loner even emptier than Billy Brown from the actor-director's superior "Buffalo 66." He's a motorcycle racer, and for a man who must measure his professional success by degrees of speed, Clay is in no hurry to confront the myriad avenues which have led his life so astray. After a sluggish race on the east coast, Clay loads his bike (A Honda RS250, although a boost in sales is unlikely) onto his van and treks solo cross country for another competition in L.A.

THE BROWN BUNNY thus slowly emerges as a personal odyssey of numbing (If well photographed) introspection, as numerous profiles of an oft expressionless but sometimes teary Clay, often shot in silence but occasionally complimented by mournful songs on the soundtrack, indicate a tormented soul with a capital T. This, along with flashbacks, sporadic stops and numerous sequences of just open roads and vistas seen through the spotty, bug-laden windshield of Clay's van, hint at the Grand Canyon size emotional void in his life, which stubbornly isn't revealed until the pic's end. Unfortunately, as film unwinds at such a glacial pace to its disappointing "Sixth Sense" style revelation, anticipation for answers regresses rather than builds as pic progresses.

Without giving too much away, it seems the disturbance in Clay's force stems from the presumed disintegration of his relationship with Daisy (Sevigny). This cypher is responsible for his melancholic disposition, officer--she's the reason Clay's chronic frown never begins to turn upside down. The enigma that is Daisy and why her memory preys so heavily on Clay's wounded psyche is eluded to in developments both good (An uncomfortable visit to her parents who haven't heard from her; an indelible shot of Clay racing his Honda through the Bonnaville Salt Flats, in which the camera lingers on him until he morbidly disappears in a mirage) and not so good (Clay's fetish for lonely women similarly named after flowers, who he picks up and discards with the same effortless abandon). Pic ends with notorious face off between Clay and Daisy in L.A. in which anguish, rage, guilt, mental instability and pent up sexual repression translates into...Chloe Sevigny sucking Vincent Gallo off on screen.

That's right. In a dramatic about face THE BROWN BUNNY shifts from an almost clinical portrait of disaffection into a squirmy glorification of Vincent Gallo's prick, with Miss Sevigny actually performing the dubious and highly publicized oral duties (To her credit, she does a pretty good job, and really how else do you think film has survived to see "release"). While in theory nothing cures the blues like rudimentary fellatio, it doesn't ultimately do the trick for Clay, and it absolutely adds nothing but a few inches of forced provocation to THE BROWN BUNNY while leaving viewers with a whole new list of questions.

For instance the question of Daisy. Love of Clay's life? Symbol of madonna purity or whorish backstabber? Victim or vixen? Whatever. It all becomes immaterial in comparison to how Vincent Gallo so savagely makes a harlot out of Chloe Sevigny, a cinematic crime for which he should be castrated. How did he get her to do this besides artistic blackmail? If you backtrack, THE BROWN BUNNY slowly answers its own question and the answer is this! Vincent Gallo the image, as depicted by Vincent Gallo the artist (And he IS a true eccentric artist--the hushed visuals of ethereal landscapes and poetic compositions are no accident), is a velociraptor of sexual estimation under the guise of a suffering innocent. THE BROWN BUNNY is a celebration of Gallo's powers of seductive persuasion, with his cock ultimately blowing in the wind as much as his tattered locks.

How else do you have Clay inexplicably convince a pretty gas station clerk (Anna Vareschi) to drop everything and leave with him to L.A., only to abandon her after dropping her off to pick up some things? How else do you have Clay, while at a highway rest stop, cozy up next to a woman sitting off by herself (Cheryl Tiegs, showing a blush of age but still so lovely) and inexplicably start snogging and caressing her in between mutually shared tears? How else do you explain a film maker, whose picture was denounced as "the worst movie ever to screen at Cannes" by a celebrated critic, release the film a year later to praise from the same critic? Easy. With those pearly blue eyes radiating universal sadness and an awkward, disaffected demeanor to suggest a child trapped in a man's body, it helps if you have a big dick to sucker audiences and the public. But such things have limitations, pornography shouldn't be mistaken for bravery, auteurs shouldn't personify themselves with pimps, and THE BROWN BUNNY shouldn't ultimately be taken for anything more deep than a pretentious exercise in vanity.



Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age