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The Brown Bunny (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:86
Fresh:38
Rotten:48
Average Rating:5/10
Consensus: More dull than hypnotic, The Brown Bunny is a pretentious and self-indulgent bore.
Theatrical Release:Aug 27, 2004 Limited
Synopsis: Vincent Gallo shocked the 2003 Cannes Film Festival with this highly personal film that he wrote, directed, produced, edited, photographed, and stars in. Gallo plays Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer on... Vincent Gallo shocked the 2003 Cannes Film Festival with this highly personal film that he wrote, directed, produced, edited, photographed, and stars in. Gallo plays Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer on his way from New Hampshire to California in a van. The cross-country trip includes stops at a gas station, where Clay meets and falls for a gas station attendant named Violet (Anna Vareschi); a roadside food stand, where he meets the sadly beautiful Lilly (Cheryl Tiegs, making her feature-film debut); and the Las Vegas strip, where he picks up local prostitute Rose (Elizabeth Blake). As he comes into contact with these women, he can't let go of his past, which centers around Daisy (Chloe Sevigny), whom he hopes to find when he returns home to Los Angeles. Nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, THE BROWN BUNNY is a poignant, emotional drama that features long scenes with little or no dialogue, as Gallo uses natural sound and lighting, jazz and folk music, and long, lingering shots of the open road, raindrops on a windshield, and the scraggly-haired protagonist to create a nearly suffocating atmosphere of loss and loneliness. Winner of the FIPRESCI prize at the 2003 Viennale "for its bold exploration of yearning and grief and for its radical departure from dominant tendencies in current American filmmaking," THE BROWN BUNNY is sure to cause a stir because of its infamous and shocking X-rated sex scene near the end of the picture, although it is a tender, soft, and powerfully subtle film. [More]
Starring: Chloe Sevigny, Vincent Gallo, Cheryl Tiegs, Anna Vareschi
Starring: Chloe Sevigny, Vincent Gallo, Cheryl Tiegs, Anna Vareschi, Mary Morasky
Director: Vincent Gallo
Director: Vincent Gallo
Screenwriter: Vincent Gallo
Producer: Vincent Gallo
Studio: Wellspring
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Reviews for The Brown Bunny
It’s the best film I’ve seen in a while that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone.
given the sustained noise generated by The Brown Bunny, such a quiet achievement amounts to a resounding success
The picture is like the plastic-bag scene in American Beauty minus the disingenuousness
Much like Bruno Dumont's equally provocative Twentynine Palms, Gallo's peculiarly earnest film ultimately questions the nature of cinema, that continuum of reality and illusion that starts when the theater dims and the screen lights up.
Punishingly, defiantly slow... but also an artful film of uncommon tenderness with modest, at-arm’s-length rewards.
It feels like a million years to get to the destination, but the journey, along with the chance to view a rare individual cinematic accomplishment, is worth the trouble.
If The Brown Bunny feels weirdly indulgent, it’s nothing if not a fiercely personal film — a work of art conjured in the spirit of poetry.
Must be one of the truest songs of roadside America that the movies have produced.
The result plays like a visual version of the Keats line, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.'
One of those movies that work retrospectively: the final scene pulls the film together.
A memorable -- if still highly specialized -- exercise in personal, '70s-style American filmmaking, with a cohesive feel and rhythm that marks Gallo as a distinctive indie talent.
The Brown Bunny is not simply an exercise. It's genuinely elemental, embarrassingly sincere.
An uncommonly sensitive film that, while still far from being great, is certainly no unmitigated disaster. It undoubtedly proves that the journey is at least as important as the destination.
It's actually quite interesting, albeit in a supremely self-conscious and artsy-fartsy way.
Latest News for The Brown Bunny
November 04, 2005:
In Other News...Vincent Gallo: Weirder Than We Thought
First there was celebrity air, and then Britney's bra -- now, an even more intimate celebrity item is up for sale: fatherhood. More...
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