In case you don’t know an amazing deal about bunnies aside from their cuteness, a chunk of rabbit-centric trivia you’ll study in writer-director Katarina Zhu’s debut function “Bunnylovr” may simply break your coronary heart. Seems, when bunnies expertise a substantial quantity of stress or a sudden burst of worry, they may go right into a state of shock: Their mushy our bodies change into limp, their floppy ears get chilly, and if untreated, they’ll even die from it.
Relaxation assured, there are not any grotesque bunny deaths to fret about in Zhu’s intimate but slight portrait of New York-based Chinese language American cam-girl Rebecca, delicately portrayed by Zhu herself. However existential dreads and visceral gusts of panic are quietly (and symbolically) in all places within the movie, as Rebecca drifts by her dead-end day job as a private assistant, and her alternate persona by night time as a web based intercourse employee. These anxieties don’t manifest themselves in apparent methods, however by a way of confinement and loneliness Rebecca appears to be trapped in, realities that Zhu and her cinematographer Daisy Zhou seize in airless, claustrophobic frames.
In a method, Zhu’s excessively tight camerawork feels redundant in “Bunnylovr,” because the bodily and emotional areas Rebecca occupies already make us really feel her seclusion clearly. Nonetheless, the close-ups intensify as she meets the mysterious John (the nice Austin Amelio of “Hit Man”) on-line sooner or later, a shopper who fortunately slips her a fast $500 for a non-public session right here and there. Finally, this stranger insists on sending her a gift. “It should make you much less lonely,” he insists. “Take excellent care of it.”
Enter the bunny teased by the movie’s title, a fluffy, dark-eyed sweetie-pie Rebecca receives within the mail and names Milk, as soon as she decides to maintain it. Barely making life work as is, she protests at first that she will be able to’t handle a pet in her present scenario. However she doesn’t fairly take some time to firmly reject the present, both. Maybe being rather less lonely wouldn’t be all that dangerous. And the way robust might or not it’s to dwell with a cute bunny? In the meantime, Rebecca divides her spare time between her greatest pal Bella (Rachel Sennott) and her long-estranged, terminally in poor health father William (Perry Yung). The previous is an artist and painter from a extra privileged background, for whom Rebecca fashions in thinly conceived scenes that give us fast snapshots of their friendship. The latter connection re-enters her life after an opportunity encounter, with William eager on spending no matter time he may need left to bond along with his daughter.
Zhu is perceptive in excavating Rebecca’s loneliness as she navigates the separate strands of her life in a state of emotional isolation. In truth, the filmmaker is at her most insightful when “Bunnylovr” interrogates the psyche of Rebecca as a lady beneath a sure age, who hasn’t skilled the relative simplicity of the pre-internet world and has to reconcile the unusual intersection of her on-line and offline connections with cautious consideration. More and more, each relationship in her life turns into a difficult query mark for Rebecca — particularly the cagey John, a tempting presence who’s each charming and alarming.
It doesn’t require a lot effort to see pink flags if you happen to merely ask your self what sort of an individual would ship a bunny to an entire stranger. However John’s unsettling aura manages to exceed expectations all the identical, when he begins asking Rebecca oddly fetishistic favors: Lie down, put the bunny in your abdomen, transfer it decrease and decrease. The worst digital camera session unfolds when John asks her to do one thing that may simply harm the defenseless creature. However will Rebecca comply, or just refuse?
The self-examination that query sparks in Rebecca is a fascinatingly wealthy one which offers with notions like consent, private boundaries and abuse of energy. Besides, Zhu doesn’t do something all that attention-grabbing with this interrogation, aside from briefly hinting at and abandoning it. Elsewhere, Zhu’s tease of hazard provides “Bunnylovr” a jolt of vitality, when Rebecca decides to have an in-person assembly with John. The filmmaker steers these silently perilous moments deftly, making us dread how darkish it’d get for Rebecca, after what turns into essentially the most uncomfortable film date we’d have witnessed this aspect of “Taxi Driver.”
On the entire, Rebecca’s motivation to satisfy John and make herself that weak doesn’t make quite a lot of sense, particularly on the heels of his creepy calls for throughout their final session. As such, the episode the place Rebecca willingly drives to Pennsylvania to satisfy her on-line admirer feels extra like a handy excuse to maneuver the plot ahead, reasonably than a plausible narrative improvement.
In following Rebecca’s deepening relationship with William throughout New York Metropolis, Zhu proves loads sharper and extra assured, particularly in her clean and complex deal with on the passage of time as he declines in well being. By the top, you may’t assist however go away “Bunnylovr” wanting extra from Rebecca and everybody in her orbit, questioning if the movie’s invasive close-ups actually acquired you any nearer to those characters. Following Zhu’s peculiar white rabbit is rarely lower than an intriguing expertise, however in the long run, it seems like a hole one.