If nobody had ever heard of Vincent Gallo and his egocentric posturing, and if this, his second feature, had never been shown as a flabby work-in-progress at Cannes in 2003, The Brown Bunny would be proclaimed a milestone in US indie cinema, not a laughing stock. Superbly shot with a deliberately abstract, ’70s sheen, it finds Gallo’s racing biker Bud Clay on the road home to true love Daisy (Chloë Sevigny).
But although controversy surrounds the sexually explicit finale, the early scenes are the film’s real triumph, showing Clay’s conflicted torment — seducing a string of women then abandoning them — with a beautiful economy. But that doesn’t mean that Gallo’s sane, mind.