The Ross brothers – American directing duo Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross – have made a career out of telling stories from the margins of US society and doing so using a film-making approach that is similarly disengaged from the mainstream. And as Gasoline Rainbow, their follow-up to Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, demonstrates, the results can be thrillingly freewheeling and creatively invigorating, if a little confounding for audience members who prefer a neat delineation between documentary and fiction.
The brothers’ technique involves casting non-professional actors as loose versions of themselves, and then placing them in a series of planned but unscripted scenarios and shooting on the fly. A gen Z Kerouakian cross-country odyssey, Gasoline Rainbow follows five teenagers from a small town in inland Oregon as they embark on a last trip together before the responsibilities of adulthood kick in. Their destination is the coast and “the party at the end of the world”. But the chaotic journey, and the like-minded outsiders they befriend along the way, are the beating heart of this loose-limbed, ad-libbed and oddly affecting coming-of-age story.
