The Brown Bunny
Vincent Gallo

Nathalie Rothschild

In the well-worn tradition of road movies, it is the journey itself, and the unexpected twists and turns takes, that becomes loaded with meaning. The significance of the end destination either changes or diminishes in light of new experiences and revelations.

In The Brown Bunny, the end twist makes the viewer see the events of the journey (which are few and far between) in a new light. It gives you new hints as to why Bud (Vincent Gallo) relates so strangely to women, and it also makes you think differently about the most interesting scene of the film, when Bud meets his girlfriend Daisy's (Chloë Sevigny) senile parents.

Gallo uses unconventional blurry and misframed shots, and there is a visually beautiful scene in which Bud rides his motorcycle across a salt desert. There are scenes scattered throughout the film that make you momentarily hopeful of aesthetic or other ideas to take away with you from the cinema. Daisy only features in a couple of flashbacks and in the final 10 minutes of the movie, which include its X-rated cause of controversy (and boos in Cannes), but another flower the film constantly brings to mind is that named after a certain mythological Greek self-lover…

The Brown Bunny seems to be mainly an exercise in ego enlargement. Gallo is not only the star of the movie, but also its writer, producer, director, editor, director of photography, production designer and camera operator. Is he extremely talented or mainly a project-in-himself? It could be argued that The Brown Bunny is a tragic story about love, but whatever meaning is to be found in it, and whatever controversy it has stirred, I find it hard to justify this film's existence.