If you can endure a 90 minute portrait of brooding self loathing with virtually no dialog and uninspired cinematography, this film is for you. The notorious scene with Daisy is incongruous. Perhaps, I am dense, but in my view, the emperor has no clothes. To be successful, this film should have elicited a strong interest in the lead character. But in the end, you have learned little about someone who is shallow and unappealing. This film portrays the journey of a motorcyclist tormented by demons vaguely hinted at in mysterious stops he makes in route. You see that he is attracted and repulsed by women. (Cheryl Tiegs, for those of you old enough to remember her from the 1970s is perfect in what amounts to a cameo.) But his encounters with women are so fleeting and glancing that you learn little until the end of the journey. Then, what you learn is too trite to support your having endured the trip with him. I believe Vincent Gallo had a serious idea, but the idea is unrealized.
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btb-ii5 December 2006
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wisewebwoman18 March 2007Yeah, I got it. It took a torturous 1-1/2 hours to get there but I was spared the 26 minutes more that others had to suffer through in the original cut.
Strange camera angles of pumping gas, lying in hotel rooms,urinating, eating, driving, driving, driving. Crying, hugging women wordlessly. Driving Driving Driving.
Yeah, the fellow is grieving a lost love with a flower's name, yeah, he's attracted to other women with flowers' names. Yeah he was sorta responsible for the loss of his love. B-b-b-b-ut we never know what that love was all about, was it as shallow as depicted here? You can't care about the main character, how can you. You know nothing of him.
This is one of the most self-indulgent movies I've ever seen. With a money shot at the end.
Avoid. 2 out of 10 for the Gordon Lightfoot song on the soundtrack. -
xande8821 September 2007I see a lot of movies, and I've seen a lot o really bad ones. The worst of them is Oscar material if compared to this film. Never has a filmmaker been so self-indulgent, cool wanna-be, disgustingly megalomaniac, and completely oblivious to an audience -- an audience left to watch a total absence of creativity -- as in this ridiculous attempt at artistic depth and deeper meanings, supposedly hidden behind empty images and badly written lines. Terrible, unforgivable waste of precious celluloid.
Watching a road through a dirty windshield for hours might seem a clever metaphorical statement if you're on crack, or are as delusional as the director, who probably thinks of himself as the greatest film-making entity that ever lived.
Me? Well, those were 90 minutes of my life that I'll never have back and do something useful with -- although I wish I could.
But the truth is that it doesn't matter if a thousand people told you how despicable this movie is -- this is a movie that MUST be seen, otherwise you won't believe someone actually had the bad taste and lack of everything else (including talent and judgment) to make it. -
rainking_es19 July 2006In the late 90's Vincent Gallo made his debut behind the camera with "Buffalo 66" (he also wrote it and produced it). It was a bittersweet story about two losers that fall in love with each other. It was a kind and so tender. So, I was really looking forward to see Gallo's next project... and let me tell you: WHAT A DISAPPOINTING!! He's suffered sort of an involution: once he was totally honest and now he's totally narcissistic and pedantic. In his second film he shows us Vincent Gallo riding his motorbike, Vincent Gallo getting' a couple of Cokes from a drinks machine, Vincent Gallo crying because the world is too beautiful, Vinczzzzzzzzzzzzz.....
There's no story, there's no script, there's nothing... Nothing to remark except what you all were expecting: that scene in which Chloe Sevigny gives a BJ to Vincent Gallo (of course). Well, Sevigny's skills for porno are improvable. Anyway, if you sit through "The brown bunny" just to watch that scene.. Well, you really need some love in your life!!
*My rate: 2/10 -
Vincent Gallo has a reputation. He makes movies that are for a lack of a better word, different, and as such, they find their way into the thought-o-sphere, where everyone forgets what makes Gallo's movies different, and the uninitiated walk away with the sense that Gallo makes real art that really is worth seeing, It's not. I promise you.
As I have seen Buffalo 66, I was prepared for the badly written dialogue and for the inordinately lengthy shots, suggesting, perhaps, that one can reach nirvana by losing one's self in the contemplation of Vincent Gallo's brooding forehead. What I was not prepared for was the sheer intensity of Mr. Gallo's narcissism. Whatever fundamental truth he may think he is conveying drowns with little more than a pathetic whimper, leaving in it's wake only the understanding that Gallo loves seeing himself on film, and that we should all love seeing him there too.
I get the sense that Gallo thinks he is like Antonioni - a master of capturing mood and the complex emotions of his subjects through minimal dialogue and vivid visual composition. He is not. The effect is that he doesn't know how to write and can't think of where to point his camera.
Oh yeah, and the controversy, the other hook to get college students looking for a cinematic rush to rent this crap from Netflix - if a movie is controversial it must be worth seeing right? Despite the desperate attempts to make the audience connect with his character, and to make sex a potent symbol,the climactic scene has the emotional depth of a cheap porno.
This is a bad movie. In every sense of the word. It is poorly written, ineptly acted, and badly directed. Gallo's only accomplishment is convincing the distributor (and enough of the audience) that it is difficult to watch not because it is bad, but because it is ART. -
vetapublishing3 December 2006Vincent Gallo According to the credits is a man with many ( probably too many ) talents. While I haven't seen any of his other films, this one lacks a, direction. b, editing c, cinematography d, intelligent script. Vincent Gallo as an actor acts well as a depressed person, but that is all. When he brakes down with his former wife or girlfriend he utters a sound which could be credited to a whingeing cat, but hardly to a man which I suppose he represents. The repetitiousness of the scenes,his portraits in the mirrors show that as a director he admires himself as an actor, but I do not consider this as a positive.
When I watched the first scene for about 15 minutes which is a motor circle race, I thought I put in the wrong DVD about motor cycle racing. I wished that I switched it off at that point. The rest of the film I watched for curiosity only. The sex scene sticks out from the film, like his prick from his trousers. It would fit into a porno film, but not what is considered an art-house film.
Just because there is hardly an intelligent sentence in the script, and luckily there are only a few sentences in the film, it does not make it a work of art. This is probably one of the worse films I have seen in the past 50 years
Andrew Barry -
Rogue-3230 August 2004I saw Buffalo 66 long before I started posting reviews at imdb, so I haven't written about that film but I loved it, I give it a 10, and after seeing The Brown Bunny at the Nuart on Saturday evening, I am here to report that I give Gallo's second feature film the same rating.
A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding this movie, or just not appreciating it, or perhaps both. There are many reasons for this, none of them valid in my estimation. The biggest protests, from what I've been reading, seem to be in the 'lack of plot' and 'vanity project' areas.
I can understand how the film would be a little slow for a lot of people, since it's basically an internal study, with none of the 'usual' mainstream (or even indy film) tactics. And in fact that's what I loved the most about the movie - how Gallo has the artistic wherewithal to be true to HIS vision of what a film can be, to how a plot of a film (and there IS a plot) can be played out in a different, less recognizable way, which leads to one of the reasons I think people are calling this a vanity project (aside from the infamous scene toward the end -- which I have to say is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the film, once you find out what's really going on with our sick puppy Bud Clay) : because the movie doesn't follow a 'typical' set-up, requiring a bit more patience on the part of the viewer, a lot of people feel more comfortable dismissing this unbelievably profound piece of work as a 'vanity project'. In reality, I believe the opposite is true: Gallo is giving his audience more credit than they perhaps deserve, in presenting such a stark, uncompromising character study. The fact that a lot of this audience chooses not to accept him on his terms does not diminish his power and the power of this movie. Can't wait for the next one, Vincent. -
While I give the film kudos for a story that I didn't see coming, after the first few minutes of needless (and extremely boring) motorcycle racing, I could see that I was NOT in the hands of a professional editor. The story could have been told far more effectively in half the time--or less. Gallo definitely needed to step away and let a professional editor do his/her thing and mercilessly cut scenes that didn't move the story forward.
While I could see that the author wanted the audience to crawl inside the protagonist, Bud, during the road trip, it didn't take that darned long to do it. Plus, his point of view changed too frequently. If we are inside his skin, then why are we looking at him for minutes in an excruciatingly long and tedious long shot? We need to see what he sees--at least with more consistency. I couldn't get my bearings in terms of what I was supposed to be experiencing and from what viewpoint.
There were other technical problems such as an inconsistency in lighting and shot quality with no apparent reason. And that spotted windshield drove me nuts. If a sign of depression and the carelessness that results from it, I'd have appreciated technique that didn't interfere so much with the visuals. Speaking of visuals, extending driving sequences to cover a song also seemed visually uninspired.
Probably most important, Gallo ignored common expectations of audiences and wanted things his way. I can't believe there wasn't an acceptable compromise. I'm pretty patient when it comes to art and film as art, but don't appreciate my sensibilities and expectations to be pushed beyond the breaking point when there appears to be no artistic justification for it. Too many scenes suffered from too few cuts and ran far too long, engendering more audience frustration than heightened emotionalism. I think this may be a result of an inexperienced and slightly self-indulgent filmmaker.
These technical problems aside, I'm usually able to spot a twist a mile away--but not this time. I wondered why all the women he encountered had flower names but that was just a hint that didn't make much sense until the end. But his name? Bud, as in "flower bud" and "clay" as in a substance in which flowers grow (he couldn't have named the character "dirt" or "mulch," after all) might have been a bit over the top. Again, typical of an immature filmmaker.
Was the encountered women's immediate sexual response to a complete stranger, fantasy on the character's part or the filmmaker's? I'd like to know how many men run into so many compliant females. From what I hear, not many--even when the guy is young, good-looking, and clearly pitiable. In this day and age, we ladies are a bit more cautious than that. Sorry, Vincent. While this may have been believable for males, I don't expect it was for very many female viewers.
I watched the film largely because I wanted to see if and how graphic sex could be incorporated into a drama without lowering it to the level of "high brow pornography." I think the film did a good job on that score, although I'd have preferred the use of a realistic-looking prosthetic such as that used in Boogie Nights. Perhaps the budget didn't allow for it or...who knows? It was certainly an interesting artistic choice and one that leaves me scratching my head in terms of the motive for including it. Symbolically, I'm a bit confused about it.
As effective and surprising as the end twist was, there could have been more in terms of Bud's descent into depression. But then, I'm a psychologist so am aware that symptoms are more than seeking surrogates, crying, and looking forlorn and depressed. Gallo missed, IMO, a chance to show more about what guilt and loss look like and how they affect people. Perhaps, this again, is a result of his inexperience. Personally, I think Redford's "Ordinary People" did a better job of showing a wider breadth of feelings of grief and loss.
Bottom line, although I thought the story had merit and did an excellent job of building to a surprising twist, I think it suffered severely in the journey towards the denouement. I hope Gallo matures and grows as a storyteller and filmmaker as I think he's got something to say worth watching. -
joker_greenhouse12 December 2008This movie is an insult to anyone passionate about the art of a good film (basically because it's trying to be art house). If I could compare this to other trash house art, it would be the equivalent of Tracey Emin's 'unmade bed' (or the tent she erected in the Tate, plastered the names of ex-lovers inside, then conned the mindless audience that it's art) on show in the Tate gallery for X amount of pounds.
I have had no training in making a movie, but I would lay my life down (!) on saying that I could definitely knock up a better story, script it out.. and shoot the thing with more talent, than I see on display here. I honestly don't know how someone can have the balls to screen this, and proudly lay claim to it's entire development? The infamous scene with Chloe Sevigny, only left me feeling sorry for the girl, and that wasn't how I thought I would feel.. being a typical male (knowing what was coming). This wasn't due to a clever script.. like I was sorry for her character or something. No, I feel sorry for her as someone who's obviously had this conned into her ear that it's art. It's just badly fed ego crap. Don't bother. -
shannygoat12 May 2006This is by far the worst movie I have ever seen. Driving across country by yourself is boring enough, but watching someone else drive across country alone is even more boring! There was only 10 lines of dialog in the movie. The camera angles were strange and the music was so depressing I wanted to slit my wrists. I think what bothered me more than the endless driving, was how these women seemed to think that he was a "hot boy". They would just randomly go with him although he looked and acted like a crazy person. Sane people wouldn't ask a stranger to drive across country w/ them, especially when she's like 16.
Although the "scene" was well hyped, if you've ever seen, given or received head, you've seen it before. More interesting to me was to find out that he just couldn't accept what happened and he was still w/ her in his mind. But I sat through 60 minutes of mindless driving for 10 minutes of an OK movie? So not worth it! -
I had heard about the controversy surrounding The Brown Bunny (who hadn't?)--the feud with Roger Ebert, the graphic sex scene--so when I received an invitation to a press screening, I jumped at the chance to see what the trailer calls "the most controversial American film ever made". What the trailer and all the hype didn't prepare me for was the fact that The Brown Bunny could also be considered one of the most original American films ever made. In a time of overblown budgets and enormous productions with endless crew lists, Vincent Gallo has almost single-handedly made a concise, well-thought out, conceptual film--a poignant, touching love story. It's not often that a director's second film is more daring than his first--money, greed and Hollywood power seem too tempting to most and sophomore efforts usually represent the big sell out. Not so The Brown Bunny, not so Gallo the iconoclast. He manages to make a second film more interesting, more intimate, more revealing and more memorable than his first. And he manages to do it outside the system.
Gallo's instincts as a director are spot-on. Not only does he pull from Chloe Sevigny the performance of her career, he also solicits from a cast of complete unknowns and non-actors (including Cheryl Tiegs) painfully believable performances. I have always thought his talents as an actor were underrated, but surely The Brown Bunny will provide him his due as Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer undergoing a breakdown while driving across the country. Simply put, Gallo as Bud is devastating. At one point during the film, I was so tense watching him fall apart that I realized that I had been holding my breath through the entire scene. When you stop to think that he is also directing himself and directing the photography, it's that much more impressive.
I don't know how someone circumvents the Hollywood system to make a movie in this day and age, but it seems that Gallo has not only done that, but done it in a way that is memorable, haunting and visually stunning. This is a truly radical film made by a very courageous filmmaker, someone willing to tell a story, tell it honestly and suffer the consequences of his convictions. Pasolini would be proud. -
rgn2219 November 2005I loved Buffalo 66, so I gave this movie a try. Unfortunately, Vincent Gallo has sunk to self-indulgent lows with this film. It is not interesting, or even introspective. Everything Gallo does in this movie has been done before, and it is entirely cliché. I don't mind that there is little dialog or few characters. I detest big Hollywood movies, car chases, and all that other garbage, and I go out of my way to find interesting indie movies. This movie has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Gallo's attempt at a portrayal of a "lost soul" is ridiculous, and Chloe Sevigny may never get another serious movie role after her portrayal. I don't want to write a "spoiler" so that's all I will say. But just seeing the movie is a spoiler enough for me.
Terrible. -
If you want to watch a guy drive around for about an hour, this is the perfect film for you. Professional drivers must detest this film even more than the average person I would imagine; And given the rating on IMDb, obviously most people think it's crap.
We even get to watch Gallo put gas in his vehicle for quite a while. What entertainment! What an artistic scene that was where we got to see him put a nozzle in and out of his vans gas tank. It made me horny, I mean snorey. What a f'n bore fest.
The film is presented in a way that is obviously meant to be a very artsy piece, but seriously. It's no better than Andy Warhol's least inspired pieces; Like a painting of a can of soup, WOW! Amazingly dull stuff; Made either by dumb people, or ones who are too hopped up on some very good drugs to realize how overly stupid the stuff they are creating actually is.
The story overall is not that bad in the end. However on the way there exists a few totally pointless scenes, and the lead up is far too long to make the climax of the film anything we give a crap about. By the end, people are throwing popcorn at the screen and screaming "Shut the hell up you bumbling moron.".
Without the much talked about real oral sex scene featuring the very talented Chloe Sevigny; I can't imagine many people in the entire world giving this film any more than a 2 out of 10 rating. Personally I don't even think the sex scene is that great. It certainly could have been much better. Chloe gives a better oral performance than Paris Hilton does in her widely known sex tape. But that isn't really saying much. I've been a long time fan of Chole's in terms of her acting, and I don't take anything away from her for attempting to push some limits with this scene. In fact it's kind of cool to see a well known Hollywood actress that I have watched for years take a chance and do a scene like this. However I wasn't that impressed with the scene, though it is certainly the highlight of this film.
3/10 -
random_avenger16 August 2010Having heard so much about the infamous The Brown Bunny over the years, it was difficult to watch it with a blank mind devoid of expectations when I finally got to see it in the small hours of last night. Ultimately it's a fairly interesting effort, expectations or not. The plot is very simple: a motorcycle racer named Bud Clay (Vincent Gallo) begins a long cross-country journey in his van to the next racing location in California, all the while being haunted by memories of his former girlfriend Daisy (Chloë Sevigny) who he wishes to meet when arriving in his destination. On his way to her, he also picks up other women only to drop them off soon.
I wasn't bothered by the long scenes of Gallo silently driving by himself, even though the cramped mise en scène and grainy cinematography make them less easy to enjoy than such scenes in some other movies "where nothing ever happens". The trembling camera inside the van creates a feel of a documentary, while the more spaciously framed outdoor shots balance the mood with their artistic calmness. The scene of Bud taking his motorcycle out and riding it on a salt desert is especially good-looking and captures a sense of loneliness powerfully.
The very soft dialogue and Bud's habit of picking up and dropping off women provide hints to the nature of his relationship with Daisy. He also frequently cries by himself – what has happened between him and Daisy? The mystery gets its explanation at the end and the emotional payoff is pretty effective (and I'm not only talking about that one controversial scene but the whole revelation). The famous sex scene fits in the mood and its uncensored nature only adds to the rawness and prevents it from feeling phony.
Ultimately the film is a curious exploration of feelings of guilt, regret, longing and loneliness, and while it's not as visually stunning and haunting as, say, Gus Van Sant's Last Days, it certainly doesn't deserve all the hate it gets. Gallo and Sevigny are both good in their roles and the quiet atmosphere will have its admirers, but I think that some of the driving scenes still feel excessive even after Gallo's re-cutting of the film after the Cannes Film Festival incident. Perhaps some further trimming of the running time could have enhanced it, but I think The Brown Bunny is a worthwhile piece of cinema as it is now. For audiences who know what to expect, it should provide an enjoyable meditation on the emotional traumas people may encounter in life. -
hugodanner200223 September 2005'The Brown Bunny' is the kind of independent art film that was always destined to polarise the opinions of critics and audiences alike. Gallo's controversial decision to incorporate a graphic hard-core oral sex scene between him and co-star Chloe Sevigny was interpreted by many as gratuitous and the film's modest pacing and minimalist plot inevitably alienated a large section of mainstream film-goers.
'The Brown Bunny', which was written, directed, edited, produced and photographed by Vincent Gallo, is essentially an existential road movie that departs from traditional modes of narrative filmic communication. The film treads a similar thematic terrain to his directorial debut 'Buffalo 66' in that in both films the central protagonist is struggling to come to terms with certain events that have taken place in his past. However, in this film Gallo dispenses with his uniquely black sense of humour and with any real linear narrative in favour of providing a character study of a man deep in grief; carefully detailing every subtle nuance and trait of his increasingly pathological behaviour.
The journey that Gallo takes us on is an entirely subjective one. Throughout the film, Gallo forces the spectator to scrutinise Bud and his facial expressions in extreme close-ups. We look on as Bud spontaneously breaks down and weeps within the confines of his van. The spectator is made to feel like a voyeur because what we are witnessing seems so personal and private. These extreme close-ups make two things clear: Firstly, Gallo is committed with the Brown Bunny to present Bud's state of mind visually and not by resorting to the traditional Classical Hollywood method of using dialogue or voice-overs. Secondly, they emphasise the impossibility of this task. Ultimately, we cannot tell how Bud is feeling simply by looking into his eyes or observing his facial expressions at close proximity. In this sense, Gallo also seems to be exploring the limits of the filmic image in representing a character's subjective mental state.
Gallo's cinematography is characterised by an abundance of static shots, precise compositions and long takes that are all employed in a methodical manner, creating a slow and rhythmic pace that accurately evokes a pensive atmosphere of romantic grieving. His decision to shoot on Super 16mm film with a non-linear digital blowup to 35mm gives 'the Brown Bunny' the grainy visuals of Independent American cinema of the early seventies.
It is difficult to fault Gallo's eye for aesthetic detail. Beautifully photographed shots of the open road and the picturesque American landscape are accompanied by the wistful and haunting melodies of folk artists like Gordon Lightfoot and Jackson C Frank. These incredibly evocative musical interludes serve to heighten the cathartic experience between the spectator and Bud, encouraging us not only to ponder the provenance of Bud's turmoil but also providing us with an opportunity to reflect on our own lives and loves.
The film's major shortcoming is Gallo's blatant and overstated use of metaphor. We are left in doubt that Bud Clay is the proverbial bunny of the film's title. Gallo's symbolism is at its most contrived in a peculiar scene in which Bud randomly visits a pet store to inquire about the life expectancy of the rabbits. This notion of Bud as the symbolic bunny who only has a short time to live if he cannot re-establish his emotional equilibrium is again overtly reinforced visually through Bud's entire brown apparel in the film's final reel.
The spectator's sense of voyeurism is sustained throughout the film and culminates in the penultimate fellatio fantasy sequence between Bud and Daisy which is beautifully bathed in speckles of blue light. Gallo ingeniously integrates icons of pornography into the narrative, which he then juxtaposes against his protagonist's feelings of insecurity, jealousy and guilt to formulate a scene that is both genuinely disturbing yet emotionally insightful. Far from being erotic or exploitation's, this scene marks Gallo's most significant achievement with 'the Brown Bunny'; a personal study of masculinity, masochism and the male ego. It is Bud's ego that initially leads him to view himself as the victim of the events surrounding Daisy's death by interpreting his pregnant girlfriend's brutal rape as an act of infidelity. His masturbatory fantasy explores the gulf between sex and intimacy in the context of a couple who have had their emotional ties severed. Bud makes a vein attempt to try and recapture the intimacy that he once shared with Daisy through an act of physical gratification. When he cannot find solace in this ritual and realises that it does not satisfy his emotional needs, he is forced to confront his own masculinity and that ultimately places him on another spiritual road to either redemption or suicide. Gallo deliberately leaves the ending wide open through his use of a final memorable freeze-frame.
I admire any man who takes three years out of his life to single-handedly create a movie that he wholeheartedly believes in, no matter what the end result. As anyone in the industry will tell you, it's hard enough to get a terrible film made let alone a truly great one. 'The Brown Bunny' stands up as an undoubtedly brave and ambitious meditation on love and loss that, despite its flaws, retains a remarkably powerful cumulative effect. -
tedg22 February 2005I wish I had seen the original, longer version. Even as it is, I was surprised at how ambitious a project this is.
Gallo is an actor that believes it possible for the nature of a character to animate a story even when the story isn't revealed conventionally. So what he does is give us a couple hours of just looking at him so we can infer the story, or at least the effect of the story. Only at the end are we told what this was all about.
The story at least the presented version is that our boy gave his pregnant girlfriend a chocolate bunny on which they gorged. She then got high (and incidentally gangraped) and choked on the brown bunny and died. Our man imagines/dreams her visiting his motel room, where he gives her a metaphorical brown bunny.
That's when we learn that nothing we have seen is to be trusted. Likely, even the fact that he is a motorcycle racer is in question; only the aimlessness of his path is likely. Women-centric events are shown, all based on a Beatrix Potter - Peter Rabbit notion of him visiting Alice's flower garden: Lilly, Rose, Violet and Daisy.
In the first: he visits Daisy's mother, who he lived next door to. She both doesn't recall him and owns a brown bunny. The second is the sequence that made this for me. He encounters a woman sitting outside and has a near wordless mini-encounter with her that packed years of a relationship into a couple minutes. (The similar fantasy sequence in "Buffalo 66" is when Christina Ricci does a "Big Lebowski" inspired dance in a bowling alley.)
The woman he works with in this sequence is Cheryl Tiegs who gives the performance of the year. I wish I knew what Gallo said to her.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching. -
I was impressed with the movie as an art piece.
I thought he might be pretentious but when he spoke he came off as being a very funny and down-to-earth guy, who happened to be an artist with a film he cared about. He said "Everybody calls me a lazy pretender but I spent all my money and worked 20-hour days for 3 years in a row to make this film.
How lazy is that?"
After the movie he showed Ebert's initial bashing of the film. He and Ebert have since met and he took half an hour off the Cannes version, including a suicide ending, and people (including Ebert) like the film better now -- as an art piece. Gallo said that he is not trying to be an artist as a filmmaker, rather, he understands that the core of cinema is to be entertaining -- hence the cuts. As an entertainer he is trying to tell a story, if he gets it just right, at least one person will be entertained by the story, and then he is done.
He really seemed like an accessible, funny, down-to-earth guy. His screen persona is a projection of his inner demons, but I think he is very much in control of that projection, and doesn't let it infect is day-to-day interactions with people. (At least publicly with people he doesn't know; I don't know what it was like for Chloe Sevigny to be his girlfriend.)
The BJ scene was integral to the film. Sevigny used to be his girlfriend, so it wasn't like he hadn't been there before and was using his director's position to get some action. I've seen worse on the Internet, and nobody makes a big deal about that. -
Gestalt7 May 2006"Brown bunny" is about loneliness beyond what most people will ever know, of the dreadful feeling that your life disastrously is over, but you still have to go on living somehow. While you watch this movie, you will not understand this. Chances are you will not understand very much at all, and be tempted to change the channel. That would be a mistake. One must have faith in the strange genius of Vincent Gallo and trust that he knows what he is doing, even when it seems that the film is going nowhere and taking forever to get there. It pays off. Not that you are going to feel good afterwards, but perhaps you will value what you have in your own life, however little that may be. I watch a lot of movies, but this is the only time in my adult age that I couldn't sleep afterwards - as the few and very understated plot elements were still falling into place, I felt as if I had witnessed a train crash, and couldn't stop thinking frightening thoughts of what a fragile thing our comfort and happiness is.
The movie would not have worked if it had been faster paced, dropped hints along the way, or contained more than the bare rudiments of a story. In this particular case, a "spoiler" will really, totally spoil the film - this rare masterpiece has nothing in common with your average Saturday evening entertainment, it must be watched unhurriedly and without any pre-conceived ideas or expectations. -
penwise25 April 2008Maybe the worst movie I've ever seen. Completely misguided and self-indulgent, it has none of the redeeming qualities of other very bad movies: it's neither campy or unintentionally hilarious. This film is the very definition of tedious, pretentious crap.
I rented it solely for my own prurient curiosity about the infamous Chloë Sevigny blow job scene, so maybe I got what I deserved. The seemingly endless, blurry shots of the side of Vincent Gallo's head as he drives his van across country were excruciating. And "Bud's" damaged, yet sensitive, attitude toward women was like a 13 year-old boy's wet dream. The formulaic device of giving all the female characters flower names was especially contrived and annoying.
It seems as if the entire purpose of this movie was to show that Gallo knows how to ride a motorcycle and has a larger than average cock. I thought "Buffalo '66" was a sweet and engaging comedy, so "Brown Bunny" was a real disappointment. See this movie only if you want to subject yourself to the absolute worst in contemporary, art film-making. -
claudio_carvalho27 December 2014After racing in New Hampshire, the lonely motorcycle racer Bud Clay (Vincent Gallo) drives his van in a five-day journey to California for the next race. Along his trip, he meets fan, lonely women, prostitutes, but he leaves them since he is actually looking for the woman he loves, Daisy (Chloë Sevigny). He goes to her house and leaves a note telling where he is lodged. Out of the blue, Daisy appears in his hotel room and soon he learns why he cannot find her.
"The Brown Bunny" is an independent very low budget movie by Vincent Gallo. The plot is developed in slow pace and is dull and boring in many moments. The revelation of Daisy's secret is totally unexpected. However the movie has become famous only because of the unnecessary fellatio of Chloë Sevigny, maybe to satisfy Vincent Gallo's ego, since does not add anything but a polemic scene to this movie in a poor hype. My vote is five.
Title (Brazil): Not available on DVD or Blu-Ray -
polysicsarebest30 March 2010This film has received a lot of hatred, and I've racked my brain trying to figure out why. Then, it occurred to me: This film was not "meant" to be seen by most of the people who have seen it. See, there are art house flicks -- designed for art house audiences. Then, there are more, sort-of mainstream flicks -- designed for mainstream audiences. This all seems obvious, and it is, but it'll probably help to understand if you've heard something bad about this amazing film. Because of the controversy surrounding one short scene in this, some people who usually don't watch "art house" films have jumped on this film, and have walked away confused. Confusion leads to hatred, usually, since we fear what we don't understand, and often hate it too. On the other hand, while a lot of lovers of underground/experimental/artsy stuff are extremely open-minded, you'll find quite a bit of them who, pretentiously, will dismiss any new Hollywood vehicle for whatever reason -- just the fact that this film has Vincent Gallo and Chloe Sevigny in it is enough for some people to hate it.
So, you've got "underground" people giving it crap, you've got "mainstream" people giving it crap, you've got people misusing the word "pretentious" endlessly. So, in all this fire, the film itself is lost. Me, I don't really swing either way; I love Mean Girls as much as Dog Star Man, Home Alone as much as Water & Power, Freddy Got Fingered as much as Oh, Woe Is Me. So, I can appreciate this film on every level, because let's face it; if any film is worth appreciating, it's this one.
Yes, this film provokes -- as any great art should, and does. It is thought-provoking, but it also tests the audience. It tests the patience, and the thinking power, and forces us to see things in a new way, to try to figure out what the characters were dealing with. It's beautiful. Simply brilliant. Also, it's genuinely moving, which is rare amongst films of this ilk. It's almost effortlessly moving, in fact; so good that it feels like Mr. Gallo wasn't even trying. He's just that talented.
I don't even like the guy. He seems like a cocky snob. But he made a great film. Lonely, haunting... one of the most depressing films I've ever seen, actually. I loved it! If you enjoy stuff like Cassavettes, Fassbinder, Kaurismaki, Jon Jost... stuff that isn't simple and easy, and doesn't wrap up everything nicely, you'll probably dig this. Also, loved loved loved the endless driving shots. It felt like I was on a trip somewhere with the character. Driving shots never get old.
Will be looked back as a classic in many years from now. -
kmcallis27 August 2005This really was the worst movie I've ever seen. I consider myself a cinematic intellectual, and this poor excuse for an art film was ludicrous. It was 90 minutes of Vincent Gallo self-aggrandizement complete with a 10 minute scene of explicit oral sex that added nothing to the movie whatsoever. I would recommend that everyone sees it, however, just so they can marvel at the fact this was ever released my a studio. I think those that actually accept this as a valid "art film" are too wrapped up in long pauses, languid eyes, and landscape and forget a decent movie should have relevancy, real emotion, dialogue, and some semblance of reality. . . . .
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Brakathor8 December 2008This is literally the first time I have seen a movie that was almost purely ruined due to the poor dialogue. Browse through some of the quotes to get an idea. The second and arguably equally or more important flaw is, simply put; This movie is literally one of the most boring films of alltime that tries to present itself as a serious piece of cinema. There is absolutely no semblance of a plot until the last 20 minutes of the movie, which beforehand is largely led by a string of seemingly random and nonsensical events, the most perplexing of which is when Budd stops to get a drink at a vending machine, passes a woman sitting on a bench, then sits next to her and the two begin inexplicably making out for minutes until he departs as suddenly as he arrived while the two never exchange a single word of dialogue. Also the scene in the beginning where Budd convinces a corner store worker to get into his van and drive off with him to California, after the two say barely more than a few words to each other, ending with him saying "Please.... Please come with me." felt painfully staged unrealistic, and sappy.
Finally when the plot revealed itself to us during the last 20 minutes, I would like to make clear that unlike a lot of people I DID finally understand the point of this film, and what it was trying to express. Essentially this is a movie about a man who is clinically insane and has hallucinations, and therefore nothing displayed on screen is necessarily reality. I was in fact a strong advocate for another poorly received film, which like this film, was showing what an insane character with a mental disorders sees, rather than what the reality is "The Hand". One major difference between both movies is "The Hand" shows context behind the displayed events, whereas in this film there is no context whatsoever in any scene aside from the last 15 minutes. Nothing displayed beforehand makes any sense and it could mean or represent ANYTHING.
If at least there was meaningful dialogue it could have been interesting, but with every scene and every character droning out 3 or 5 word sentences at the same tepid pace, it is not how people converse, it is not engaging, and it quite literally seems as though the actors are forgetting their lines. Compare this now to a movie like "Warum Lauft Herr R. Amok" Which like this film has literally no plot until the last 5 minutes. All the conversations in it were very engaging, very realistic and played out almost like a documentary which is what this film NEEDED to do in order to succeed in what it set out to do, and how it set out to do it, but quite simply, the people involved in this film thought they were vastly VASTLY greater than they really are to have made this, DO not know good cinema, and did not put the effort here.
To be fair, the ending, when a plot was finally established was quite powerful, and the talk between Budd and Daisy IN ITSELF, was moderately well conceived which is why I gave this film a second star. This moment would have been quite effective in its own contained capsule, as everything that happens before these 15 minutes is completely inconsequential to this scene, and moreso, when it is revealed that the scene was Budd's hallucination, so then too was everything that preceded this scene, which was the ONLY scene of the movie with any shred of value to it, though appearing rather cheap and amateurish when the best it can do is to utilize such visionary artistry as seen in Japanese porno films with the censored fellatio scene, in which Chloe Sevigny claims that the sex act was not simulated, which absolutely floors me, for since it is censored, and given that any real sex act would therefore be irrelevant to the viewer, that is basically like saying "I don't suck dick for any artistic end, I do it just for the taste of it." I find that very amusing, but nonetheless it has to be said, if this scene was its own short film, it would have been effective.
I hate to use the word arrogant, but when you produce a movie that 1. Has awful dialogue 2. Has plot devices that make no sense and have no context. 3. Is essentially an entire illusion of the main character. 4. 50% of which is comprised of nothing but shots of driving on the open road, which have NO artistic point; if they expect the viewers to find meaning and value in illusions which essentially have no meaning or context and are not even interesting, that is pure arrogance, and this film is indeed nothing but self indulgence. The point is, if you're like me and you watch a new movie a day, some of which are very well done and MUCH more clever, witty, well crafted, and have real meaning and an actual, why bother INVENTING a context behind an entire illusion of a movie to give it value and meaning, when it is painfully boring, illogical, and staged, and 50% of it literally consists of watching a man driving and walking. -
mouritsvanballegooijen24 September 2007As a film fan I've tried to watch it on three different occasions... I stopped watching it before the notorious bj scene. I've tried this movie stoned, drunk and sober and it is just horrible. I kept thinking to myself: "why am I watching some narcissistic guy pretending to be an actor?" I read on wikipedia that this movie cost $10.000.000. Someone got screwed big time. I'm a designer with film making experience and I can make a better quality film with my DV cam and my laptop. I actually suspect Vincent Gallo of having used just that and putting the rest of the $9.990.000 in his pocket. Besides that the plot is just one big ego trip of Mr. Gallo Acting: kindergarten play level. Framing: awful Technical difficulty level of this movie: high school with dumb students. And the worst part: It's so pretentious it isn't funny anymore, while the level of associations and intelligence would bring tears to any serious film student or any sapient being.
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raoulfenderson18 August 2005I really wish Roger Ebert hadn't "changed his mind" and actually *recommended* this woofer after previously calling it the worst movie he'd ever seen at Cannes. According to Rog, the editing did the trick. Gallo supposedly left a substantial portion of the Cannes version on the cutting room floor. Too little, too late, in my humble opinion. One day, and very soon, the critics who had anything good to say about this film will see the error of their ways; they will repent in sackcloth and ashes, and the entire production will be eternally damned and consigned to the sulphurous, unquenchable flames of cinema hell.
A lot of people post comments on a lot of movies here, and quite often you read the comment, "This is the worst film I've ever seen." I don't want to be one of those people. It's so, well, trite. And usually not true. People just like to blow off some steam. So instead I'll just say that this is a tedious, ghastly, juvenile, inexpressibly awful display of utter dreck.
I tried desperately to find one reason, just one tiny little miniscule reason, to rate this movie higher than rock-bottom. But I can't. In fact, if there were a "zero" rating, I would have to check with someone at IMDb to be sure that "zero" means what I think it means, i.e., totally, absolutely, irrevocably devoid of even a quark's worth of value -- and, having confirmed this, I would devote the remainder of my mortal sojourn upon this earth searching for an even LOWER rating for "Brown Bunny."
You have been warned. And if you're just gonna rent this on DVD to scan to that one scene we've all heard about, do yourself a favor and rent a porno instead. Any porno. Maybe one of those series like "Euro Sluts 20", or whatever. The production values, acting, dialogue, and especially the sound, I guarantee will be far superior to anything you'll "come across" in "Brown Bunny."