Buffalo '66
Directed by Vincent Gallo
- drama
- romance
- comedy
The story
Billy is released after five years in prison. In the next moment, he kidnaps teenage student Layla and visits his parents with her, pretending she is his girlfriend and they will soon marry.
What it’s like
Washed-out winter light over grey Buffalo streets, with a palette of bruised blues, sickly beige and the dull red of a bowling alley's carpet. Vincent Gallo's film is built from stiff, self-conscious compositions: long held shots of rooms where nothing much moves, camera pushing in on faces that hold their awkwardness, and sudden jolts into hyperactive montage, a tap-dancing sequence, a bowling-lane flourish, a bathtub scene tinted and framed like a painting. The score is a patchwork of sparse piano, jazz-adjacent cues and needle-drop pop, with long stretches of sour, ambient quiet between them. Vibe: sad, scruffy, darkly funny, a little manic, like a late-night bus ride with someone who won't stop talking about their childhood. The pacing lurches between stillness and frenzy, and the emotional register swings from tenderness to humiliation. The central figure is a volatile, wounded man slowly and unevenly softening toward a bewildered young woman. Intensity: moderate; there is some violence, a kidnapping, threats, and a rough, uncomfortable sexual scene, but no gore, and the menace sits more in dread and cruelty than in bloodshed. For people who want abrasive, unvarnished indie character work and can handle an unlikable, unpredictable lead.
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