‘Gasoline Rainbow’: Venice Review

Dirs/scr: Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross. US. 2023. 109mins

Five teenage friends go on a road trip before adulthood beckons in Gasoline Rainbow, a vivid travelogue whose freewheeling spirit emulates the film’s improvisational making. Veteran directors Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross recruited a cast of non-actors, presenting them with daily scenarios as their characters drove across Oregon in a quest to reach the Pacific Ocean, combining narrative and non-narrative techniques in a similar way to their last picture, 2020’s Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets. The results are often revelatory, offering an unvarnished look at being young, free and unsettled, with the individuals they meet being almost as important as the journey itself.

A vivid travelogue whose freewheeling spirit emulates the film’s improvisational making

Premiering in Venice, Gasoline Rainbow will be released through MUBI in the US. International audiences might be enticed by the film’s ingratiating premise, although the story’s experimental nature is a limitation. Expect positive reviews and warm festival buzz.

Essentially playing versions of themselves, Tony Aburto, Micah Bunch, Nichole Dukes, Nathaly Garcia and Makai Garza live in a sleepy Oregon small town approximately 500 miles from the Pacific Coast. Having recently graduated from high school, these friends have little to look forward to as they reluctantly prepare to find jobs. (Pursuing a college degree is not even mentioned as a possibility.) Hopping in a van, they plan on trekking to the ocean, which they’ve never seen — and perhaps attend the mythical Party At The End Of The World. 

The Ross brothers, who also served as the picture’s writers, cinematographers and editors, sought to fashion an Easy Rider-esque odyssey, hiring a casting director to help them gather a group of non-professional actors and then building their characters around aspects of their personality. Much like with Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, which ostensibly told the story of a bar’s closing night and similarly placed non-pros in pre-planned situations, Gasoline Rainbow utilises the thinnest veneer of fiction to allow for authentic, improvised interactions. 

These teens are refreshingly lacking in poise or camera savviness, giving off an utterly convincing natural air as they go along on their adventure. Slowly, we start learning about them: Tony is a world-class flirt, while Mahai laments being one of the few Black faces at their high school. When they are in the van together, they crack dorky jokes, misremember song lyrics and do everything in their power to try to forget that, after this road trip ends, they will have to face the harsh realities of being grownups. Gasoline Rainbow eschews the phoney drama of reality television with its pumped-up rivalries and over-the-top behaviour. Instead, we are treated to several understated, lyrical passages — not to mention occasional moments of tedium as the road stretches out in front of the characters and obstacles imperil the trip, such as when their tyres are stolen.

Incorporating voiceover largely drawn from interviews conducted during the audition process, Gasoline Rainbow juxtaposes the characters’ lighthearted on-screen banter with the deeper, more vulnerable thoughts we hear on the soundtrack. But as the quintet cross paths with different colourful individuals — including a middle-aged skateboarder named Gary who has lived a nomadic existence — they start to confess their hopes and fears to these strangers as well as to one another. 

While none of the unrehearsed conversations are particularly profound, their immediacy and candour is striking, even moving. Although these teens’ lives do not feel rich with potential — from what we gather, they mostly grew up in difficult, economically-disadvantaged households — they are clear-eyed and smart. (When talk starts up about older people not ‘getting’ their generation, the immediate rejoinder is that, soon enough, they’ll be the older people replaced by a newer generation, who will feel similarly about them.) 

The Ross brothers reject the cliched types that are endemic to such a film — there is no stereotypical jock, cheerleader, sexpot or bookworm. Instead, we spend time with goodhearted, everyday young people from the margins of society who find like-minded souls on their quest. And the filmmakers’ handheld camerawork only further emphasises the whole enterprise’s offhand beauty and unpretentious celebration of discovering oneself. “We haven’t thought this through,” admits one of the teens early on in Gasoline Rainbow. They and the filmmakers will figure it out along the way.