Vincent Gallo is a musician, a former fashion model, and a cult actor — perhaps you caught him as the Mexican nun in "Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trick Baby." And, at 42, he has what some might call a sensitive ego.
Last year, when film critic Roger Ebert trashed Gallo's new movie, "The Brown Bunny," at the Cannes Film Festival, calling it the "worst film in the history of the festival," Gallo struck back, placing a curse on Ebert's colon. Ebert went on to reply that watching his own colonoscopy was more entertaining than watching "The Brown Bunny."
Gallo, for now, gets the last word.
"The Brown Bunny," which he wrote, directed, edited, produced, partially shot, and acts in, may sound like a vanity project. But this lonesome sort of home movie is far easier to watch, and get lost in, than the macho hamming in a real vanity epic like "Troy."
Playing in a version considerably shorter than what played at Cannes, "The Brown Bunny" is certainly about how vain Gallo is. Yet rarely has narcissism produced such a handsome work of cinema.
Comparisons to Andy Warhol's movies are fair. But it doesn't feel as though Gallo is pulling a stunt, the way it always did with Warhol.
Gallo plays Bud, a racer of motorbikes whose bike remains in the back of the van as he crosses the country to California. Given how cool Gallo's oily black curls would have looked whipping around on the back of a chopper, I'd have to call the movie's chosen mode of transport an impressive show of restraint.
Gallo also stops to engage a pretty, mealy-mouthed convenience store clerk and a pretty, mealy-mouthed hooker. In the movie's home stretch, it's the undaunted Sevigny, who plays Bud's long-lost girlfriend, Daisy.
She arrives at Gallo's motel, where they talk. (She: "Can I touch you? Can I touch you? Can I touch you?" He: "I like you." She: "Please, can I hug you?" He: "OK.") Then commences the touching that has been uniting and dividing people since the film bowed at Cannes.
"The Brown Bunny" is not rated but would probably receive an NC-17 for a graphic sex scene, male nudity, occasional use of strong sexual profanity and some frank sex talk. Running time: 92 minutes.