Venice 2010: Promises Written In Water

Several years ago, I was present at the now infamous Cannes screening of Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny, a film that brought hoots of derision and howls of laughter from a large number of those present. Gallo's latest effort behind the camera, which screened here yesterday as part of the Official Competition, makes The Brown Bunny look dynamic, action-packed and not that bad after all.

The opening credits of Promises Written In Water begin with the words “edited by Vincent Gallo”, and are followed by another that proclaims “music by Vincent Gallo” before the final credit announces the film to be: “written, directed and produced by Vincent Gallo.” All of which, inevitably, provoked a few titters from the audience.

Gallo also stars in this tale of Kevin (Gallo) who works as an undertaker, smokes a lot, drives around, eats, takes photos of corpses, has dinner with, talks to and shouts at a woman played by French model Delfine Bafort who, in turn, spends much of the film naked. And that’s about it.

Shot in murky black and white, in extremely long takes, with the camera often focusing solely on Gallo (there’s one five-minute shot which consists of him, in close up, smoking a cigarette, pacing his room, before sitting down and sighing loudly), it's clear Gallo's aiming to replicate the moody, melancholic, monochromatic atmospheric art movies of yesteryear, but what he ends up with resembles an ineptly made student film, and even with a running time of 73 minutes is interminable.