Unmitigated Gallo
Six angles on The Brown Bunny's vanishing points.

Aries rising

From the black encasement of that Ram van (Prince Vince, ever the Aries) to the strange, harsh heaven of that Best Western room – five shades of white, all ugly, with lens flare (an outdoor phenomenon at once connoting amateurishness and a mad ride into the sun) shooting little extravisual prismatic rays – Vincent Gallo's out-there stare is like nothing else.

Gallo's mottled, inky blinks looked so much like Wile E. Coyote's in Buffalo '66, whereas here he's pretty much taken on the ravaged, beaten eyes of one E.A. Poe, whose creations Ligeia, Eleanora, and Berenice are exhumed with a few whiffs off a cig-like crack pipe by Daisy (Chloë Sevigny). And while, yes, most of the film's surface is shuttling – between coasts, between jogging the memory and trying to forget, between still gazing and anxious cruising – the real white-knuckle kick of The Brown Bunny is its peculiar gloss and churning palette, its restless experimentation.

With his telephoto jitter, windshield reflections (or is that a double exposure?), film stock hazes, transparencies, flares, flashes, and male monumentality, has Gallo actually careened over the Jersey barrier and headed into the land of Stan Brakhage or Andrew Noren? However one answers the call, and however much Gallo loons it up at festivals or junkets, The Brown Bunny is a heroic piece of handmade Art product, an eerily quiet ride into one man's heat waves, and a soft-hard stare at an elongating, doubling, faraway image of Gallo, riding his utterly convincing agony into the maelstrom. (Edward E. Crouse)

Control room

Part of Vincent Gallo's road movie goes west – from where-the-sidewalk-ends New York to the St. Louis Arch to the Bonneville Salt Flats to motel California. And the rest of his movie goes south – down Gallo's exposed chest to belt line, zipper, and beyond the land of the mythic Calvin Kleins. Where the mouth of the Mississippi meets the Gulf of Mexico: Chloë Sevigny's big scene in service of Gallo's ... vision. (Bona fide news service headline: "Actress Says Sex Scene Makes Sense.") But as this destiny becomes manifest, the film's theme of control masking vulnerability becomes apparent.

From the opening credits to the after-film Q&A he held in San Francisco last month, the control is obvious. Director-editor-cinematographer-actor-publicist-caterer (he fired one intrepid staffer after she refused to eat at Ruth's Chris Steak House) Gallo called the shots, the angles, and the clothes beautifully, and in his favor. While a rumpled Cheryl Tiegs is arranged to stagnate at a rest stop, and earlier an actress nicknamed "scraggle-tooth" generously displays her imperfections, the director by contrast – sideburned, sunglassed – can't help but ooze charisma in gorgeously rumpled jeans, in underwear over white motel sheets, or on his motorcycle in a wife beater to skid across beautiful Utah salt. When Sevigny emerges in his hotel room to say, "I know I look ugly" (and does) wearing brown polyester pants and a matching circa-1979 vest, an outfit Gallo insisted on choosing, I felt anguish too.

Given the way the cards are stacked, it's hard to argue that Gallo has made himself vulnerable here, but I will. Turning adult masturbation formula on its head – beautiful woman made ugly to fulfill sexual fantasies – his movie doesn't so much titillate as arouse emotions, not the least of which is hatred toward the director. It's awful, and amazing, to think he designed it that way. (Susan Gerhard)

Pickup, letdown

Desperate to deny it though he may be in interviews of late, Vincent "I'm not an artist nor am I influenced by any other filmmakers" Gallo took the same baby steps toward getting his first feature made as Quentin Tarantino did: initially unable to launch Buffalo '66 on his own, Gallo approached one of his heroes, Monte Hellman, American cinema's epic poet of the alienated road picture, hoping the Two-Lane Blacktop director might help him realize his vision. But when it dawned on Gallo that Hellman might actually anticipate taking his own approach to a film that would eventually carry his directorial credit, the former fashion model took his script and went home, later whining to indieWIRE that he'd "realized that my hero had become a stubborn, miserable, out-of-touch man."

Well, to paraphrase Preston Sturges, some have labels thrust upon them, others are born to them – and where stubborn, miserable, and out-of-touch are concerned, Gallo is nothing if not a natural man. He's also a rather feeble holder of grudges, as his spluttering sophomore outing quickly obviates. Mirthful though it may be for J. Hoberman to read The Brown Bunny as a remake of Easy Rider – if mainly in order to replay Peter Fonda's epochal announcement, "We blew it," as a punch line predicated on the penultimate oration of Gallo's new film – it's actually the burnt rubber of Hellman's pavement parable that seems to have lingered longest in the young filmmaker's ever-flared nostrils. Desperately waving his wand and hoping Chloë Sevigny will make all those indelible memories of Laurie Bird disappear, Gallo seems as lost as one of the fantasies Warren Oates kept picking up – and dumping back out – all along the road. And before you can say "Monte, keep your pink slip," we're right back at Tarantino again: silly rabbit, dicks are for kids. (Chuck Stephens)

Bunnicula

Since the film's inauspicious Cannes Film Festival debut, the mystique of The Brown Bunny has been amplified by, among other things, the public Vincent Gallo-Roger Ebert feud (after Gallo claimed to have put a Kenneth Anger-blessed "curse" on Ebert's colon, the critic said a video of his own colonoscopy was "more entertaining than The Brown Bunny") and a giant billboard – depicting the film's signature graphic image, of course – that briefly loomed over the Sunset Strip in early August. The New York Post insisted costar Chloë Sevigny was rumored to have been dropped by her agency because of the film, or more specifically, because of you-know-what scene (a claim Gallo denies); Sevigny recently told the Associated Press, "I knew people would not understand it.... When you see the film, it makes more sense."

Lest anyone believe Gallo is thrilled by all the notoriety, the auteur seems annoyed, or at least nonplussed. "Bad publicity doesn't feel good," he explained to Reuters. "Bad publicity creates caricatures out of people." That may be so, but it sure draws a lot of attention to a movie that moved Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum to note in her 2003 Cannes coverage, "It's unlikely that anyone will ever see a frame of Vincent Gallo's infamous folly again." Granted, the Bunny opening locally is a slightly shorter, tidier version than the original, Cannes-scandalizing one. But it's here, at last, and if it's ever going to transcend a tidy label as "that movie with the blow job," Gallo better hope all the people who've been following the prerelease hype go see the movie for themselves. (Cheryl Eddy)

She's not there

Horse's mouth gossip has it that Vincent Gallo adored Chloë Sevigny before she hit what Larry Clark might consider legal age. But then Harmony – last name Korine – brought discord. "The only impact Harmony Korine will have," rages one king-crimson vincentgallo.com screed, "[is] on the lives of the girls he slipped drugs to, got stoned and raped while they were passed out." The kids will understand that reference, whether they're 14 or 45. It makes The Brown Bunny's final act a lot more curious than any porn-seeker or sniping studio whore in chivalrous critic's disguise will ever fathom. Is Bunny's party flashback set at a Clark station? Has Gallo obsessively been watching the Telly? Does a certain ex need rescuing?

At least one thing will never stray from Bud Clay, this motorcycle diary's rigid yet malleable Gallo body double. Even as Bud leaves Violets and Lillys and Roses strewn in his wake, the camera stays faithful till the end. It can't get enough of this guy. They have so much in common. Both specialize in awkwardly long gazes. Both are familiar with disappointment – especially the kind whittled into the face of a roadside hooker. The role of camera's best Bud allows Gallo to stretch his profile, and compulsions, as big and wide as America. If America is more beautiful, ugly, and weirdly compelling, the highway strip's charms are still just a reflection of ego: a semi with "WERNER" painted on its back is overtaken; later, in a hookup spot where Fassbinder (or the Farrelly brothers, for that matter) would find a hairy trucker, Gallo discovers a former fishnet pinup with downcast eyes.

The pinup's a faded imitation, briefly touching, so what about, um, true love? Electrical poles look like cemetery crosses just before the first split-second fantasy glimpse of her. Many states later, Sevigny "really" appears with the suddenness of a potent phantom. Line readings aren't her forté, and she does some with her mouth full. But before and after, her presence does the talking: honey, let me show you how a star holds the screen. Artistically, she's kissed some frogs lately, so why not blow an old flame? He flickers, and then she's gone – to linger on. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Rev it up

Like sitting in the backseat on a cross-country tour, watching The Brown Bunny is at times claustrophobic (trapped in a van, animals in cages) and tedious (gas station stops, joyless stays in cheap motels), and dizzying (yellow dotted lines, windshield wipers). But it's also a great way to travel: hitting on past haunts, new horizons, memorable characters, and the potential of the open road ...

Vincent Gallo's look at the U.S. landscape and human patterns has an undeniable background of "because I can" spirit and talent and self-confidence – if not quite of the same caliber that helped settle the West, then certainly of the sort that made a 16-year-old runaway from Buffalo into a renowned artist, model, actor, musician, director, writer, producer, real estate appreciator, photographer, and costume-clothing-chocolate designer, etc. As someone who didn't leave Buffalo (the "City of No Illusions") until the ripe old age of 20, I can certainly admire his "balls," so to speak, in making the movie he wanted to make.

Despite what you may have heard, The Brown Bunny isn't a feel-good or an immediate-gratification movie. Rather, it's a barren topographic glimpse, with occasional lightning flashes, into the pain and loneliness and history of Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer, a man among many though not quite a regular guy, a really great kisser but a really bad communicator, someone who needs comforting. Bud's repression and gloom are unrelenting, even in those acts that typically signify relief: washing your face, taking a shower, hanging your hand out car window to surf the 65-plus mph oncoming air, racing a motorcycle across the Utah salt flats, seducing flower-named women with a look. Which is what makes the few character interactions, the sunsets, the memories, the arrivals all the more potent. I guess you could call The Brown Bunny a road trip anti-saga, wrapped up in a love story and a mystery, with a lesson, perhaps, that life can be very short. (M.P. Klier)

'The Brown Bunny' opens Fri/3 at the Lumiere Theatre, 1572 California, S.F. (415) 267-4893; and Act I and II, 2128 Center, Berk. (510) 843-FILM. See Movie Clock for show times.