Starring Vincent Gallo, Chloíƒ « Sevigny, and Cheryl Tiegs. Rated R.

Any discussion of The Brown Bunny invariably begins at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where Roger Ebert stormed out of a media screening and, stopped by a camera crew outside the theatre, declared that The Brown Bunny was the worst film in the entire history of the festival. Director Vincent Gallo responded as any mature filmmaker would: he allegedly called Ebert a "fat pig" and put a voodoo curse on his colon and prostate. Ebert responded that he had found his own colonoscopy more entertaining than Gallo's film, and he offered that one day he might be thin but that Gallo would "still be the director of The Brown Bunny."

The Brown Bunny may, in fact, be a brave attempt by a reasonably talented actor to break the bonds of narrative storytelling. But during 92 agonizingly drawn-out minutes, Gallo fails to get much of anything going except his own notorious erection.

The pugnacious director plays Bud Clay, a moody motorcycle racer driving his black van from New Hampshire to his next race in Southern California. Along the way, he meets girls with flowery names (Violet, Rose, and Lilly) with whom nothing much happens. It is only with Bud's ultimate pick, Daisy (Chloíƒ « Sevigny), that a true connection is made. In a spartan L.A. motel room, Daisy performs oral sex on Bud (for real) in what has to be the most graphic yet bleak sex scene on film this year.

Here, as in 1998's Buffalo '66, Gallo's motives seem sincere enough, but overlong passages of dialogue-free footage shot from behind bug-splattered windshields don't always add up to great art. Yes, we are all haunted by bad choices and it can get lonely on the journey, but Bunny offers little to no meaningful discussion of the human condition. The director barrels down that same metaphorical highway that a stoned Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda took in 1969's Easy Rider, a film more important for what it wasn't than was. Gallo is definitely trying, but like Hopper and company, he blows it.