Vincent Gallo Keeps "Promises Written in Water" Off Screens Toronto International Film Festival Vincent Gallo in "Essential Killing," in a role for which he won best actor at the Venice Film Festival. "PROMISES WRITTEN IN WATER," the third and latest feature directed by the renaissance man and longtime media antagonist Vincent Gallo, has proved as elusive and ephemeral as its title. Mr. Gallo's previous features, "Buffalo 66" (1998) and "The Brown Bunny" (2003), generated much sound and fury: gossip-column mockery, hostile reviews, drawn-out feuds with collaborators and critics. But his silence surrounding this film has been deafening. Completed in 2010, "Promises Written in Water" was shown that year at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, and has not been publicly screened since. The film's Web site says it is "not currently planned for release." In an interview with a Danish magazine last year Mr. Gallo said that it would be "allowed to rest in peace, and stored without being exposed to the dark energies from the public." When Mr. Gallo appeared on the list of artists for the 2012 Whitney Biennial, it seemed that he might have had a change of heart. But as the exhibition wound down (the film and video program concludes on Sunday), the time and nature of Mr. Gallo's participation remained unclear, even to the curators. Alongside his name the Whitney Museum's Web site stated, "Date to be announced." And as of press time "Promises" had yet to be shown. Jay Sanders, a Biennial curator, said he had not heard from Mr. Gallo in several weeks. With Mr. Gallo - who did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment - it helps to have a sense of his contradictions. He is often called a narcissist and a provocateur, not without reason, but his films and music exude a deeply felt angst, an almost painful sincerity. He is a born salesman, active in real estate deals, but he plays to perfection the part of the misunderstood outsider who would never stoop to selling out. He courts publicity that he seems genuinely to resent. He reportedly sued the City of Los Angeles this year over a business-improvement district. Given all this, is the Whitney no-show a ploy or a tantrum? An act of self-sabotage or a principled stand against establishment culture? Mr. Sanders said that when he and his co-curator, Elisabeth Sussman, began discussions with Mr. Gallo more than a year ago, Mr. Gallo had already decided not to have the film distributed. "There's a way in which suppressing it from the public is fundamentally part of the point," Mr. Sanders said. There was talk of showing it only once or off site, he added, perhaps by invitation. Mr. Gallo declined to be pinned down, the curator said, and his wait-and-see approach seemed to fit the exploratory spirit of this Biennial. Mr. Sanders added that from the start he suspected that nothing might materialize: "I always had the thought that maybe it would be an absent presence. I felt even if he chose not to enact anything, it would still have some potency. This is not the first time the Biennial has in effect included an unseen work. In 2004 Maurizio Cattelan had a self-portrait buried under a museum floor. There is also a tradition of conceptual artists "who deal with absence and disappearance," Mr. Sanders noted. But while Mr. Gallo is a onetime habitué of the downtown New York art world, it is unclear if he thinks of his nonappearance as part of the project. Even more than Mr. Gallo's previous films, "Promises" is a one-man show: at a Toronto screening the credits, which identify him as the writer, director, producer, star, editor, music composer and art director, drew a big laugh. Shot in limpid black and white, the film loosely concerns the relationship between Mr. Gallo's character, an apprentice at a funeral parlor, and a terminally ill young woman (Delfine Bafort). Once again the Gallo character is not far from his off-screen persona - morose, intense, verbally abusive and easily wounded - and his female co-star, like Christina Ricci in "Buffalo 66" and Chloë Sevigny in "The Brown Bunny," is saddled with a role best described as thankless. Some have speculated that Mr. Gallo is reluctant to show the movie because of its murky production history. According to a 2010 Movieline article, "Promises Written in Water" originated as a project called "The Funeral Director" that starred Mr. Gallo; it was only during shooting that he took over as director. The original synopsis of "The Funeral Director" bears little resemblance to the finished film. The festival reception to "Promises" was more subdued than the legendarily mutinous response to "The Brown Bunny" in Cannes. Variety's review said it was "a disappointment both for those gleefully expecting a disaster and for supporters hoping for something better." But there were also appreciative early notices. Mr. Gallo's decision to withdraw the movie from circulation contradicts his willingness to expose it to the spotlight of two prominent film festivals. Giulia D'Agnolo Vallan, the United States programmer of the Venice Film Festival, said that he had asked for it to be in the main competition. At the festival, Ms. D'Agnolo Vallan said, the filmmaker was a perfectionist about technical matters. He remained in the projection booth during the press screening, but he bailed on the official one. He also failed to turn up at the awards ceremony, where he won best actor for his role as a Taliban fighter in Jerzy Skolimowski's "Essential Killing." Other festivals have tried to screen "Promises Written in Water." The Viennale film festival recently published a brochure that included an e-mail Mr. Gallo sent the festival in response to an invitation in September 2010. It read: "I would be delighted to show my film in the Viennale. I do not offer press kits. I do not offer stills. I do not offer screeners. I do not offer DVD's. I do not offer posters. I require a first-class flight to bring the print however I do not offer any photo ops or press exchange in any way. My fee for showing my film is $35,000 dollars US. There's also a one-line email Mr. Gallo sent the Viennale in December: "sorry to say i no longer attend film festival for any reason." Both Mr. Sanders and Ms. D'Agnolo Vallan said that screening fees did not come up in their conversations with Mr. Gallo. To those who value his work Mr. Gallo's behavior can seem self-destructive. "Things like what happened with the Whitney, or him not showing up to pick up a prize in Venice, sometimes deflect attention from the fact that he truly is a filmmaker," Ms. D'Agnolo Vallan said. Then again, the work and the persona could be seen as complementary. "I think he sets up conditions that let him make work that's very unguarded," Mr. Sanders said. And to weather it requires almost the opposite extreme. Mr. Gallo, 51, still keeps busy acting. He played the lead in an Italian update on the Kaspar Hauser story and has a cameo in Julie Delpy's "2 Days in New York." And for what it is worth, he is not entirely absent from the Biennial. His presence in the catalog - for which every artist in the show was given complete freedom - makes quite an impression. Mr. Gallo's contribution is, like so much of his work, ridiculous, witty, wholly personal and rather beautiful. It consists, in its entirety, of six full-page portraits of himself.