Bruno, the latest character to be pulled out of Sacha Baron Cohen's closet, is a comic subversive of such wild extremes that brother Borat has got to be blushing his way out the backdoor in disguise.
If you find yourself in a similar flush, do resist the urge to flee. Like a wayward love child of Lenny Bruce and the Three Stooges, Bruno is an idiot savant of penetration -- breaking through borders, boundaries and anything that resembles good taste on his way to whipping up as much cultural anarchy as he can. I would guess Bruno is holding on to an R rating for this sublimely spicy souffle by the skin of his, well, let's just not say.
As a towering gay Austrian fashionista who's been waxed stem to stern, Baron Cohen brings a multiplicity of stereotypical sins to bear as he searches out the line between social satire and garden-variety sacrilege. Though I'm sure if he ever found the actual "line," he would immediately flounce across it, possibly in some fetching bondage wear, with director Larry Charles and the rest of the guerrilla camera crew in tow.
It's the subtext running through all of Baron Cohen's work: Whatever naked truth I'm exposing, it's only for the greater good; if you're uncomfortable, that's your problem. Besides, the whole boundary-pushing business is historically ever so thankless a task, just ask martyrs, comics and politicians. So let me take a moment to thank Baron Cohen, our very own hall monitor for humanity, for all the necessary havoc he's wreaked for the rest of us.
Like Borat, Bruno is on a journey. Technically his destination is Hollywood, where fame perfumes the air, but really that's just a ruse for more rounds of the gotcha game Baron Cohen always plays to brilliant effect. Watching is akin to that horror film feeling: the cringe as the unsuspecting soul approaches the trap, the wince as it snaps closed and the hysteria-tinged laughter as the flailing begins. It's strangers Bruno has his eye on, but sometimes I think the unsuspecting soul might be us.
The film opens with a "What would Larry, Curly and Moe do?" moment, if they were X-rated, gay and had a lot of playtime on their hands. There is mostly unmentionable usage of equipment and substances accompanied by a lot of broad physical naked silliness in an extensive sex scene featuring Bruno at the opulent height of his European television talk show career. Ah, the glory days.
