The Brown Bunny (2003) Movie Review, Cast & Crew, Film Summary

A lovingly textured mood-piece reflecting on the nature of grief. The hero’s reflective journeying counterpoints what is essentially a mystery of character we wait to be solved. When we discover after the final, breathakingly intimate scene that we’ve been watching a fantasy that brings about a catharsis of mourning in our hero Bud, it makes sense. Something odd about Chloe Sevigny’s dialogue patterns alerted me, and I thought a few of Bud’s earlier encounters had a touch of make-believe to them as well. Vincent Gallo works his ass off, Sevigny glows with supernatural emotion. Gallo mines the tone of American New Wave films like The Rain People, Five Easy Pieces, and Two-Lane Blacktop, almost to the point of aping them, and cross-pollinates with long-take Jarmusch affect, thus conjuring something vital out of thirty years’ worth of other film styles. And yeah it had a weird affinity with Broken Flowers, which it’s superior to in many ways. Overlong and underdeveloped, it might have been better as a short, but this is an affecting and lucid offering from a talented film-maker. Oh yeah and Sevigny gives Gallo a blow-job. My only comment on this is that I hope in the sequel he’s got the good grace to go down on her.