Bill and Turner Ross made a splash with Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, a fly-on-the-wall “documentary” portrait of a Las Vegas dive bar that invited comparisons with the carefully curated Americana of the Maysles brothers. Except it wasn’t. The bar was located in the filmmakers’ native New Orleans. The clientele had not wandered in off the street. They were carefully cast to play versions of themselves. Leading man Michael, who repeatedly refers to himself as a failed actor, was Michael Martin, a Louisiana stage actor; Marc is local musician Marc Paradis.
The Ross brothers have stated they are sick of having the documentary-hybrid conversation. It’s impossible, however, to watch this freewheeling Gen-Z road movie without guessing about its nonfictional underpinnings.
Gasoline Rainbow, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year, features a group of graduating high-schoolers who improvise scenes and use their own names – Micah, Nathaly, Nichole, Tony and Makai – as they embark on a carefree, 500-mile odyssey across Oregon. “We’re in this car,” says Nathaly. “We get to be ourselves and we don’t have to stay in the one place.”
They variously wander into woodland and punk parties, listen to Cypress Hill, lose their van, wander across hot asphalt and befriend a skater in a post-TikTok reprise of Easy Rider. They smoke weed and ponder Neil Armstrong’s return to Earth: “I was on the moon and now I’m in a grocery store ... how is that normal?”
Their improvised conversations keep leisurely pace with their spontaneous adventure. Straddling the current revival of the picaresque in US indie cinema (The Sweet East, Riddle of Fire) and cinéma vérité, this is a pleasing meander, skilfully directed, shot, and edited by the upcoming auteur siblings.
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