MOVIE INFO:
Celebrated directorial duo the Ross Brothers (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets and Contemporary Color) turn their pioneering hybrid approach to the cinematic road trip with GASOLINE RAINBOW. Undoubtedly candid yet deeply loving, this is an expansive portrait of the new generation as told in their own words. With high school in the rearview, five teenagers from inland Oregon embark on one last adventure. Piling into a van with a busted tail light, their mission takes them to a place they’ve never been — the Pacific coast, five hundred miles away. The plan, in full: “Fuck it.” Through desert wilderness, industrial backwaters, and city streets, they connect with outsiders on the fringes and discover their lives will be determined by the trails they blaze themselves. These are forgotten kids from a forgotten town, but they have their freedom and they have each other, hurtling toward an unknowable future — and The Party at the End of the World. A SXSW and Venice Film Festival selection, GASOLINE RAINBOW depicts a wild and true coming-of-age. With a beating heart and an irrepressible spirit, this rhapsodic look at today’s American West reminds us of the timeless joys of community.
REVIEW:
Gasoline Rainbow,the Ross Brothers homage to road movies, has the look and feel of a documentary. And I was taken in with that ploy, until I read that the five teens on the road trip never knew each other until the first day of shooting.
Gasoline Rainbow is a very convincing improv. The boys and girls here are photogenic but exude a strong regular kid aura. I bought the idea that they knew and grew up with each other hook, line ad sinker. I found it easy to believe they would hop into a van on a whim and drive 500 miles west to the Pacific to attend the ultimate party at the end of the world. I am a cinema romantic and have a weakness for believing things can happen in the movies that will never happen IRL
Tony (Tony Abuerto), Micah (Micah Bunch), Nichole (Nichole Dukes), Nathaly (Nathaly Garcia), and Makai (Makai Garza) live in an Oregon nowhere town never named, but that exudes a flat prairie aura full of existential ennui. They all just graduated high school and are facing the idea of work, the responsibilities of adulthood. But before that, one last adventure, one big party. They have the insouciance of youth, and surprisingly the resiliency, the ability to adapt to the good and bad flows of life.
They travel light, talk about superficial and deep things, smoke weed, hop from party to party, live off their meager funds and the kindness of strangers. The ones that help are seen. The ones that don’t will steal their wheels off camera and force the five to walk and hitchhike or ride the rails, in the end, partying on a yacht the rest of the way. Montages of blurred city lights fading and flowing by in the dark are a constant theme and metaphor.
The kids are comfortable with the camera’s gaze, improving on the situations created. They respond to music almost as if It was the required retelling of the myths of the elders, each lyric flowing and being completed one to the other. They live for the goal, achieve it in some ways, fail in others. We know nothing of how they will get back or what will happen to them. They’re fixed in the present, seeing the past, waiting impartially for the future. The Ross Brothers want us to know these characters for a little bit. Gasoline Rainbow aspires only to be a brevity for the now.
Gasoline Rainbow gets a3.0/5 or a B. It’s streaming on Mubi.
CREDITS:
Directed by
Written by
- Bill Ross IV
- Turner Ross
Produced by
- Michael Gottwald
- Carlos Zozaya
Starring
- Tony Abuerto
- Micah Bunch
- Nichole Dukes
- Nathaly Garcia
- Makai Garza
Cinematography
- Bill Ross IV
- Turner Ross
Edited by
- Bill Ross IV
- Turner Ross
Music by
Casey McAllister
Production
companies
Distributed by
Mubi
Release dates
- September 7, 2023(Venice)
- May 10, 2024(United States)
Running time
110 minutes[1]
Country
United States
Language
English
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