Courtesy ARRAY
In the opening moments of Frybread Face and Me from Diné filmmaker Billy Luther, young so-called “City Indian” Benny (Keir Tallman) discovers that rather than catching Stevie Nicks perform over the summer as his father promised, he’ll instead be spending his coming months on the Navajo rez with his grandma and uncle.
Deflated, the 13-year-old bolts into the streets of San Diego screaming, where he tears open his button-down to reveal the Fleetwood Mac tee underneath. Moments later, we cut to a bus stop in Winslow, Arizona: The wind cuts into the eerie silence as Benny faces a part of himself he’d never known.
Though steeped wholly in the Indigenous experience and set in the ostensibly non-populous high desert, Frybread Face and Me comes packed with a quiet beauty for those who have the patience to let it unfold. The elevator pitch is that a young urban Native gets in touch with his roots during a summer on the family sheep farm with his cousin (the eponymous Frybread Face; Charley Hogan), but Dark Winds writer Luther proves a subtle storyteller as the film progresses and much of his semi-autobiographical story covers the universal pangs of youth.
Frybread Face and Me lives in its unceremonious moments—the auntie forced to shear sheep though it’s not her job; the grandmother who won’t learn English; or the hard nosed, rodeo-loving uncle exhausted by Benny’s lack of know-how. Tallman sometimes impresses as a hyper-observant cypher through which anyone unfamiliar with rez life can learn. Hogan, meanwhile, clocks in with the polar opposite personality type—part teacher, part ball-buster, all energy and sarcasm, though loving in her own way. Hogan’s performance becomes the high point of the film, and she projects both a confidence and ability that Tallman can’t quite match. In more thoughtful moments, his eyes say more than enough, however, and it’s easy to see where he’s coming from.
Of special note, the film’s art director Natalie Benally finds a satisfyingly anachronistic glimpse into rez life wherein the house has modern amenities while sitting mere paces from the sheep corral cobbled together from old pallets and chicken wire. Like Benny, many viewers might not know what to make of it, but as Benny finds more life within himself and as his relationship with his cousin grows, so, too, does our understanding of the importance of heritage. When the film ends, Benny might still become anything, and that right there is the true glory of youth.
8
+Hogan; funny and informative
-Newcomer actors that aren’t quite there yet
Frybread Face and Me
Directed by Luther
With Tallman and Hogan
Netflix, NR, 82 min.
