THE BROWN BUNNY
Hare raiser.
Running time: 92 minutes. Not rated (graphic sex). At the Sunshine, Houston Street at First Avenue.
THERE’S more to “The Brown Bunny” than oral sex. Yes, the much-talked-about movie does climax with Vincent Gallo being serviced by Chloe Sevigny. But the graphic scene serves an artistic purpose, just as the film’s other 90 or so minutes do.
Some critics have called the flick tedious because it consists mostly of Gallo driving cross-country in a black van, with shot after shot of his profile and the road, seen through a dirty windshield.
But there’s a method to Gallo’s seeming madness.
(It should be noted that the version opening today is 26 minutes shorter than the one screened in Cannes, where Roger Ebert famously called it the worst movie ever offered at the festival and Gallo put a curse on the critic’s prostate.)
Gallo – who also scripted, directed, produced, edited, wrote some of the original music and helped out with the cinematography – plays Bud Clay, a motorbike racer driving from an event in New Hampshire to his home in Los Angeles.
He’s deeply depressed. We’re not sure why, but it has something to do with Daisy (Sevigny), a former lover.
His actions are irrational. He begs a young woman he meets at a gas station to join him on his journey.
She agrees, but he ditches her as she packs her stuff.
He stops to visit Daisy’s senile parents, who are guardians of their daughter’s brown bunny.
There’s vague talk about her having a child, but nothing definite.
At a highway stop, he buys a soda, then launches into wordless, heavy-duty kissing with Lilly (supermodel Cheryl Tiegs), a middle-aged floozy who’s sitting around with a cigarette and a cup of coffee.
If ever there were two needy people, it’s Bud and Lilly.
In Las Vegas, Clay stops three times to chat with street-corner hookers.
He picks up the third one (who looks more like the girl next door than a prostitute), buys her lunch at McDonald’s, pays her and drives off. Sex is never discussed.
Next stop: L.A., where Bud and Daisy hook up at a motel. It’s there that the sexual encounter – which, by the way, isn’t much of a turn-on – takes place.
More important, it’s where the pieces of the puzzle that Gallo has been creating finally come together.
What might have seemed inconsequential before, takes on deeper meaning.
As evident from “The Brown Bunny” and his directing debut, “Buffalo 66,” Gallo is talented, although in an unconventional way.
Call him an angry young man with a future.
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