Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Bunnylovr’ Review: An Intriguing Plunge Into the Aimless Life of a New York Cam-Girl Ultimately Feels Thin
If you don’t know a great deal about bunnies apart from their cuteness, a piece of rabbit-centric trivia you will learn in writer-director Katarina Zhu’s debut feature “Bunnylovr” might just break your heart. Turns out, when bunnies experience a considerable amount of stress or a sudden burst of fear, they might go into a state of shock: Their soft bodies become limp, their floppy ears get cold, and if untreated, they can even die from it.
Rest assured, there are no gruesome bunny deaths to worry about in Zhu’s intimate yet slight portrait of New York-based Chinese American cam-girl Rebecca, delicately portrayed by Zhu herself. But existential dreads and visceral gusts of panic are quietly (and symbolically) everywhere in the film, as Rebecca drifts through her dead-end day job as a personal assistant, and her alternate persona by night as an online sex worker. These anxieties don’t manifest themselves in obvious ways, but through a sense of confinement and loneliness Rebecca seems to be trapped in, realities that Zhu and her cinematographer Daisy Zhou capture in airless, claustrophobic frames.
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In a way, Zhu’s excessively tight camerawork feels redundant in “Bunnylovr,” as the physical and emotional spaces Rebecca occupies already make us feel her seclusion clearly. Still, the close-ups intensify as she meets the mysterious John (the great Austin Amelio of “Hit Man”) online one day, a client who happily slips her a quick $500 for a private session here and there. Eventually, this stranger insists on sending her a present. “It will make you less lonely,” he insists. “Take good care of it.”
Enter the bunny teased by the film’s title, a fluffy, dark-eyed sweetie-pie Rebecca receives in the mail and names Milk, once she decides to keep it. Barely making life work as is, she protests at first that she can’t take care of a pet in her current situation. But she doesn’t quite make the effort to firmly reject the gift, either. Perhaps being a little less lonely wouldn’t be all that bad. And how tough could it be to live with a cute bunny? Meanwhile, Rebecca divides her spare time between her best friend Bella (Rachel Sennott) and her long-estranged, terminally ill father William (Perry Yung). The former is an artist and painter from a more privileged background, for whom Rebecca models in thinly conceived scenes that give us quick snapshots of their friendship. The latter connection re-enters her life after a chance encounter, with William keen on spending whatever time he might have left to bond 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 fact, the filmmaker is at her most insightful when “Bunnylovr” interrogates the psyche of Rebecca as a woman below a certain age, who hasn’t experienced the relative simplicity of the pre-internet world and has to reconcile the strange intersection of her online and offline connections with cautious consideration. Increasingly, every relationship in her life becomes a tricky question mark for Rebecca — especially the cagey John, a tempting presence who’s both charming and alarming.
It doesn’t require much effort to see red flags if you simply ask yourself what kind of a person would send a bunny to a complete stranger. But John’s unsettling aura manages to exceed expectations all the same, when he starts asking Rebecca oddly fetishistic favors: Lie down, put the bunny on your stomach, move it lower and lower. The worst camera session unfolds when John asks her to do something that might just hurt the defenseless creature. But will Rebecca comply, or simply refuse?
The self-examination that question sparks in Rebecca is a fascinatingly rich one that deals with notions like consent, personal boundaries and abuse of power. Except, Zhu doesn’t do anything all that interesting with this interrogation, other than briefly hinting at and abandoning it. Elsewhere, Zhu’s tease of danger gives “Bunnylovr” a jolt of energy, when Rebecca decides to have an in-person meeting with John. The filmmaker steers those silently perilous moments deftly, making us dread how dark it might get for Rebecca, after what turns into the most uncomfortable movie date we might have witnessed this side of “Taxi Driver.”
On the whole, Rebecca’s motivation to meet John and make herself that vulnerable doesn’t make a great deal of sense, especially on the heels of his creepy demands during their last session. As such, the episode where Rebecca willingly drives to Pennsylvania to meet her online admirer feels more like a convenient excuse to move the plot forward, rather than a believable narrative development.
In following Rebecca’s deepening relationship with William across New York City, Zhu proves a lot sharper and more confident, especially in her smooth and sophisticated handle on the passage of time as he declines in health. By the end, you can’t help but leave “Bunnylovr” wanting more from Rebecca and everyone in her orbit, wondering if the film’s invasive close-ups really got you any closer to these characters. Following Zhu’s peculiar white rabbit is never less than an intriguing experience, but in the end, it feels like a hollow one.
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