Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Yes, I’ve heard this movie both blows and sucks. Ahem. But this guy went into it open-minded, and here’s what he came away with...
Hi,
Vincent Gallo's BROWN BUNNY got a theatrical release here in Austria starting last Friday and after the whole fuss Ebert threw at Cannes of course I had to check it out. My idiotic ramblings can be found below:
I have no clue how to begin writing about this insane flick. But let me warn you right away that this post will have some spoilers. There's just no way I could write about a film with so little plot without giving away what little plot it has. Which includes the M. Night Shayamalan-esque twist ending. Yes, you read that right, Vincent Gallo pulls a SIXTH SENSE on us ... but more on that later. Just consider yourself warned.
It would be soo damn easy to just dismiss BROWN BUNNY and write a scathing review condemning it to hell and back. Normally I have a problem with people who call a film "pretentious" because more often than not that only means that the film was not to their taste and that they didn't get it. BROWN BUNNY, however, all but begs to be labelled as such.
The film starts with footage from a motorbike race. It's filmed with shaky-cam and so poorly framed that it looks like the worst pan&scan job ever. And for some reason the sound fades in and out so that sometimes it's silent, the next moment the sound comes back with full force. It also goes on for about 5 minutes. Like with many other scenes in the film I'm sure it has a deeper meaning but I haven't figured it out yet.
After the race we meet the main character, star, director, producer, camera operator Vincent Gallo himself who plays David Clay, a motorbike racer whose life apparently consists of driving from race to race.
On his way to the next race he meets several women. Those meetings always follow the same pattern. He runs into them, makes some sort of connection, they immediately fall for him and make out with him ... and then he just jumps into his car and drives away. Looks like our man David is both looking for love/company/tenderness and can't deal with it. Interesting but did we really need to see him kiss and stroke the hair of an ugly 50 year old hag for 10 minutes? That was pretty painful.
We also slowly learn that David used to live with a girl named Daisy but apparently that's over. He once stops by her parents house and talks to the mother while the father makes abstract gestures with his hands and remains silent. The parents haven't heard from Daisy for ages and David says he doesn't know what's up with her either. The father makes more abstract gestures. I tried to suppress a fit of hysterical laughter but only half succeeded.
Then David comes to Daisy's apartment and knocks on the door for a few minutes but nobody answers. So he leaves a note and goes to a hotel.
I'm now going to talk about the ending of the film so if you're trying to go into this film without knowing about the "big surprise" skip to the next paragraph NOW. OK, you're still reading. Fine. While he's in the hotel room Daisy stops by. They talk, Daisy goes into the bathroom and fires up a crack pipe. Daisy is played by Chloe Sevingy. They talk some more about how she still loves him and wants to be with him and touch him and so on and he says he still likes her but doesn't love her anymore. So she drops to her knees and starts sucking his dick. Cue hardcore footage for Sevingy licking Vincent Gallo's rather huge cock. While she does that he spouts some macho crap about how she'll never suck any other cock and then he blows his load and she swallows. Um ... OK. Sevingy doesn't looks half bad with a dick in her mouth by the way. After putting his dick away David all of a sudden starts accusing Daisy of being a fucking whore and fucking other guys. We flash back to a party where she smoked dope and passed out. She was then gang-raped by a bunch of dudes. David saw this but didn't do anything because he thought she was doing it of her own free will and thus betraying him. She was also pregnant with his child. Problem is, after the rape she threw up and choked on her puke. Back in the hotel room Daisy tells David that she died. So ... she's either a ghost or a figment of David's imagination, a masturbatory fantasy. Wow! That's better than anything Shyamalan could ever cook up! Then the film fades to black or white or some other color. I can't remember.
End spoiler. And I still can't make up my mind about the film. It is often painful to get through. At one point a guy who sat behind me left for the toilet or a beer or whatever and when he came back after a few minutes he asked his buddy if he'd missed anything important. That had the whole audience howling with laughter. But I have to say that as tedious as the film is most of the time it is shot beautifully. The music and the imagery successfuly convey a sense of loneliness, despair, depression and self-loathing. At the end you sort of understand David's character but you also realize that he's a major asshole who walks away while his pregnant girlfriend is being raped and then lives a life of self-pity. And he conjurs up her image to get off to while accusing her for getting raped. Oh, PLEASE!!!
I think in the end BROWN BUNNY is a fascinating film, but certainly not a good one. Whatever that means. I haven't stopped thinking about it since I saw it. But I don't really like it. I don't know if I could sit through it again yet somehow I want to give it another try. Argh! Draw your own conclusions.
I’m sure we will at some point, but thanks to the MPAA, I’m guessing Americans will be offered some watered down version of the movie. We’ll see...
"Moriarty" out.
