Gaso­line Rain­bow review – glows brightly

The pre­car­i­ous­ness of youth, the excite­ment of dis­cov­ery and the over­whelm­ing truth that you have to be the mas­ter of your own des­tiny sits at the heart of the Ross broth­ers lat­est exper­i­ment in hybrid film­mak­ing. Gaso­line Rain­bow is a fic­tion­al road trip movie that was seed­ed dur­ing lock­down. The pair came up with a set of sce­nar­ios and guid­ed five high-school grad­u­ates from their home­town of Wiley, Ore­gon to the Pacif­ic coast.

Nathaly, Makai, Tony, Nic­hole and Mic­ah are all on the cusp of adult­hood and painful­ly aware that this short break from real­i­ty is a rare chance to grasp at pure free­dom. Crammed into a dodgy camper­van, the kids impro­vise their dia­logue while the broth­ers focus on their behav­iour, com­ic obser­va­tions and the awe-inspir­ing nat­ur­al beau­ty around them. Ear­ly in the film they sing along to Guns N’ Ros­es, then quick­ly turn their atten­tion to dream­ing about how won­der­ful it would have been to go club­bing in the 1990s. This is all while they are mes­sag­ing on their iPhones (a mind-blow­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment to those who came of age dur­ing the ​’90s).

The film as, ​“The cast of Street­wise nav­i­gat­ing the wild roads of Easy Rid­er.” If you watch Mar­tin Bell’s Street­wise doc­u­men­tary from 1984 now, it offers an alarm­ing time-cap­sule of dimin­ish­ing hope felt by dis­en­fran­chised Seat­tle kids liv­ing on the streets. The real record­ed voiceover of the young cast of Gaso­line Rain­bow that plays over the film is clear­ly a nod to Bell’s doc­u­men­tary. Even though the sce­nar­ios are man­u­fac­tured, the emo­tions are dis­arm­ing­ly raw; naïve yet depress­ing­ly world­weary. This is a gen­er­a­tion that has been born into a time where cli­mate change is beyond a press­ing issue and the direc­tors thrust the young cast into enchant­i­ng scenes of euphor­ic nature.

The peo­ple they meet on their jour­ney include some nomadic punks who teach them how to ride the rails and a skate­board­er who dons a sea cap­tain hat and refers to him­self as ​‘nau­ti­cal by nature.’ They are all run­aways. Some have rebelled from hate­ful upbring­ings and oth­ers are recov­er­ing from addic­tion issues. Visu­al­ly the film acknowl­edges the dig­i­tal age with mul­ti­ple drunk self­ies and snap­shots of land­scapes and cities, while son­i­cal­ly it is a curi­ous exper­i­ment in jux­ta­po­si­tion. The sound­track is a reminder of how music can shape and influ­ence a per­son while also act­ing as a gen­er­a­tional connector.

The fash­ion of the ​’90s is vibrant­ly alive via the enthu­si­asm of the teenagers; there are hints of Har­mo­ny Korine’s dirt­bag opus, Gum­mo, in places but this strikes a more poet­ic note in its por­tray­al of Gen Z by tak­ing its lead from T.S. Eliot’s ​‘The Waste­land’. It amounts to more than just ​‘a heap of bro­ken images’ – it’s a warm­ing depic­tion of friend­ship as family.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.