Straightened, bleached-blonde hair cut to the shoulder, layered with curtain bangs. A whimsical baby-blue slip dress—flirty yet simultaneously sweet. Cinderella-blue tights, capped with sparkly silver kitten heels. This is Christina Ricci at seventeen years old, her beauty accentuated by blue eyeshadow and an angelic glow.
Her character, Layla, is the reason I watched the 1998 comedy-drama Buffalo ‘66.
As it often goes, the newly discovered movie rocketed to the top of my watchlist, surpassing the hundreds of other patiently waiting films. My minimal research indicated that Buffalo ‘66 was a cult classic, and I was wishful for a five-star watch.
Buffalo ‘66 is Vincent Gallo’s directorial debut, in which he both directed and starred. Our protagonist, Billy Brown, has just been released from prison (where he was put for a messy sports gambling incident that wasn’t entirely his fault). Billy’s cranky personality is displayed almost immediately and stays consistent throughout virtually the entire story. The film is Billy-centric.
In Buffalo ‘66, all supporting roles have limited characterization and development. This constitutes the film’s fundamental issue, with our manic pixie dream girl, Layla, suffering the most.
Layla is a teenage tap dancer—and that is all we learn about her. Her adventure with Billy begins when he, a sleazy 30-year-old, abducts her, a naive seventeen-year-old, from her dance class. The story unfolds as Billy drags Layla to act as his wife at a family dinner.
Billy is no anti-hero—at least not to me. Some of his charming actions include snapping at Layla, dragging her down a staircase, muffling her initial screams, and forcing her to chauffeur him in her car.
Yet, despite this, Layla shows affectionate curiosity for Billy. She acts as if they’re on a date, albeit an odd and tense one. She coquettishly asks him about himself, her blue eyes innocently gazing with a slightly pouted lip. She essentially becomes the silent, doting wife that Billy requested her to be. Eventually, Layla professes her love for Billy. Love for what? I’m not sure. The repulsive personality she’s known for six hours?
I assumed this was an act that she would drop, yet her adoration was her whole personality. While I sincerely wanted to like Layla, I couldn’t move past her two-dimensionality. She is the manic pixie dream girl reduced to being a mere servant of the male protagonist. I have never seen another character that exists so obviously for solely the benefit of another. Buffalo ‘66 is not a romance, as in a relationship between two people. This instead shows an egocentric relationship between one man and his non-existent, dream woman.
Making the story disturbingly real, Billy is widely assumed to be an exaggerated portrayal of Gallo himself. In the public spotlight, the actor has no shortage of controversial, repulsive actions surrounding his name. Disregarding the actor’s many repulsive and controversial actions of the past decade, his behavior in Buffalo ‘66 was reported as horrendous. Post-release, Gallo kindly shared his “great respect” toward Ricci, calling her a derogatory term and sharing, “[She] was basically a puppet. I told her what to do, and she did it.” Likely out of spite for her publicly denouncing his behavior, he made sure to insult Ricci’s appearance, despite previously claiming to have a lifelong crush on her.
Ricci has stated that she “spent most of that movie trapped in a car with a raving lunatic.” In addition, even though Ricci was a minor, Gallo voted against Ricci’s mother being present on set.
Despite both on and off-screen issues, the movie is beloved by many and has a strong 3.8-star Letterboxd rating. Granted, the movie isn’t all horrible. The romantic trope (though overdone) has potential, the cinematography is beautiful, and there are unique camera angles, particularly during the family dinner.
However, it’s not right to glorify this film. To do so is to completely disregard Layla’s injustice, and—more so—establish completely ridiculous expectations of what a relationship should look like. The romantics who watch this film need to understand that Layla is not a real girl—she is Billy/Gallo’s fantasy. Further, I hope that Pinterest girls who romanticize Layla and claim she is “just like them” understand that they don’t have to try to make themselves a pretty projection of some creepy director’s imagination.
This article is by no means a criticism of Ricci—she plays Layla fantastically. However, it is a call to re-evaluate Buffalo ‘66’s cult-classic status. Angelic characters and enticing cinematography don’t automatically equate to a stellar film, not when the story is clouded by fantastical narcissism.
Henry Oxley • Nov 25, 2025 at 11:53 am
Being two months late to read this review, I suppose I’m a bit late in responding to it. While I think all of your criticisms of Gallo and the film as a whole are completely fair, I do feel that you are a little harsh toward a very unique work of art. Gallo is a very weird and original artist in the world of cinema, having made only made three feature length films (with one locked in a vault somewhere where no one will ever see it and the other being “The Brown Bunny” a picture that some swear by, but I cannot stand). So I suppose I appreciate “Buffalo” more than you do, although not because of the film’s own merits. Buffalo 66 is a pretty middling work of art, but it is also the best film made by a very unique artist, and that makes it really quite interesting when put under a microscope. Despite being merely okay on its own, “66” becomes infinitely more interesting and nuanced when one realizes just how bold it is. Rarely do artists expose themselves so fully on the screen in such detail. It isn’t often that a filmmaker can make so fascinating a self-portrait, where he portrays himself as ugly, deranged, and perverse. “Buffalo 66” is like an uncommonly pretentious and artistic confession written by a lunatic. Now of course I do not excuse Gallo’s treatment of the cast (particularly Ricci), but the comment he made about her (“basically a puppet I told her what to do, and she did it.”) is not something particularly uncommon for a filmmaker to say. I believe it was the French auteur Robert Bresson who thought that actors should function as zombies, blank, emotionless statues meant to be manipulated and controlled by the director. Now of course Buffalo 66 isn’t nearly as good as “A Man Escaped” (and many would argue not as good as “Pickpocket,” “Au Hasard Balthazar,” “Mouchette,” “L’argent,” you get the picture), but it is still a very notable and fascinating film. “Buffalo 66” fits snugly among the other breakout features of many other American filmmakers who emerged in the 90s (Think PTA, Wes Anderson, Tarantino, Fincher, even Rodriguez) but is so much darker, can tell us so much about who made it. When one watches “Chinatown” they probably won’t be able to deduce how evil Roman Polanski is, but after but one viewing of Buffalo 66 you can learn everything you need to know about what kind of man Gallo is. I’m sorry this is so overlong, I’ve only realized now how long this paragraph has wound up. You’ll very likely never read this, and it’s perhaps better if you don’t (my shoestring arguments are built more around personal beliefs I hold toward film, yours is much more logical), but I do hope you reconsider this film just a little bit. No work of art can ever exist in a vacuum, and all films can be analyzed in a myriad of ways. While I detest “Triumph of the Will” and think it a disgusting work of propaganda, it’s arguably better than “Schindler’s List” in terms of education about the fanaticism and horror that birthed the Nazi war machine, and I think it’s essential viewing. I feel a similar way towards “Buffalo 66.” Very much detestable, but oh so interesting.
Excellent review by the way, one of the most enjoyable pieces I’ve read from TCT.