As far as pretentious art films go, Gallo has made himself a perennial contender for the all-time crown with this film. While his minimalist near-masterpiece debut, Buffalo 66, showed him to be a brash visionary with a my-way-or-else attitude, Brown Bunny seems to suggest the most broken heart in the world. Much has been made of Vincent Gallo outside the realm of art, using his artistic expressions as a pretext for condemnation. Yes, he is insular and elitist, self-obsessed and rabidly independent. He is also cross and too forward, he does not suffer fools (gladly or otherwise), and he most certainly does not compromise on any bullet points in his method. After Brown Bunny received a record vote of no-confidence at Cannes, Gallo apologized earnestly and then denied the apology altogether. Gallo is, above even the label of artist, a whirling contradiction of self-empowerment. You're free to talk about him all you want and he will gladly echo your sentiments or lash into you with twice as much venom as you unleashed on him, as long as you're talking about him.

Where Buffalo 66 shared the spirit of Jean Genet at his most rebellious and human, Brown Bunny is, at times, the most absurdly American of films with the directorial approach of Van Sant's Elephant and Last Days. This means, of course, that much of the film is not action at all. A near majority of the screentime is a passive view of the roads of America, the camera sitting on a van's dashboard and just recording the move westward from New Hampshire to Los Angeles. The road becomes a character in itself, though adding nothing more than a sense of isolation within the midst of a massive country. Gallo's Bud Clay, the greasy-haired competitive motorcyclist, is a man so broken by his love for Daisy that he fails to be a living person at all anymore. This movie is about Bud Clay going through the motions.

The mystery of what happened with Daisy permeates the film as Clay hops from woman to woman, all strangers, with their own floral title (Lily, Rose, and Violet). Clay manages to initiate contact and even kiss these girls before disappearing from their lives forever, no apologies and definitely not fulfilling that hole that dwells within him since Daisy left. The pathos of the movie start and nearly end there, this is a not very subtle exploration of moving on after the loss of your whole world. The scenes are so sporadic, and so unapologetically emotional (even enhanced by the seeming lack of emotion through the lack of action), that I'm sure few but the arthouse audience will connect with the picture at all.

But that is where the major flaw in the movie lies. While Gallo can dazzle as he showed in Buffalo 66, he also has the ability to give the downer story a happy ending. And he did this in his first film, setting perhaps an unacceptable precedent for him to change from that path. Some would say it takes no courage to do a movie about loss and that actors love these roles because they get to fight their own demons. What we see in this movie is Gallo fighting windmills not because he thinks they are monsters but because he can't stand the windmill. This story has no happy ending and, if anything, the build up of isolation and pain does little to forecast the emotional hell of the final ten minutes.

While the film may best be remembered for its pornographic scene, in which Clay makes contact with Daisy (Chloe Sevigny) again and receives a very real session of oral sex, that unobstructed sexual release fades quickly in my memory as it is immediately followed with a brutal comedown that explains everything you've seen before. We find Gallo reliving his own mistakes as well as Daisy's and punishing himself through her, not just for what happened but for what he allowed to happen. Gallo's pain is intensely real and not altogether accessible for the simple reason that pain can become the person it has targeted. And that is the simple answer to this film: Pain rules in the end.

All the dynamic, though static, shots of roads unfurling before the van, all the interactions with floral-monikered beauties, and the final crushing blow of Clay's realization of what has happened, these are all irrelevant except for how they make the point that pain can ruin a person. Clay will likely never find peace again, even after his revelations. He will never reconcile the world of the future because he barely exists in the present. He will be, eternally, that choice he made so long ago. A man living with his ghosts for life, that is the clear modern man, stripped of his macho bravado (and surely Clay could have some, he is a professional motorcycle racer, no?) results in a sensitive man, walking with his open wounds. It is, in my opinion, one of the most touching and painful movies to appear on the scene.

The movie ends with Clay continuing to roam, his brown bunny (bought as a gift for Daisy because her parents had one that she left behind) and his ghosts keeping him company. The soundtrack is eerie in it diverse evokation of Americana, the bleak bar songs that play right before closing, and the film stands as a personal statement that I truly found shocking in the way it resounded with me. What Gallo has done here, besides putting forth the idea that the pain of the past can destroy your future, is show us that the joys of a future are destroyed inherently when you allow the past to have this much power. I never once doubted that Clay's pain was very real and appropriate, but by the end I realized that his pain would always be there. Yes, you can try to stuff the hole with truckstop Violets, with rest area Lilys, and with streetwalking Roses, but that pain, as long as you allow it to have power, does win in the end. As such, this movie is among the most heartbreaking you can imagine.

Gallo's directorial hand is not cheapened by his attempt to be abstract, it is instead strengthened by his sure and steady use of the lack of action, filling a fairly simple plot with the most tense silence imaginable. His acting is beside the point as his character only ever has one emotion through much of the movie. And the writing, while sparse and seemingly irrelevant, unleashes a flurry of jabs at the appropriate moment to render the viewer senseless with the overload of the climax. It is an artistic statement of the highest quality, an emotional blender that renders you pliant in the hands of a skilled artist, and, if nothing else, got him a bj from Chloe Sevigny.

Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age