Frybread Face and Me: A Navajo Summer Reservation

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Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes:

Frybread Face and Me follows two adolescent Navajo cousins from different worlds as they bond during a summer on their grandmother’s Arizona ranch, learning more about their family’s past and about themselves.

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Review:

Frybread Face and Me historic and personal focus makes it seem almost that an autobiography of its director, Billy Luther is unspooling on the screen. What’s there is detailed. It exists on the border between painful and happy memories. The film seems to be shot entirely in the twilight time where memories squint in the fading light and collect dust in their very recall.

Luther’s young self stand-in, Benny (Keir Tallman) is a Navajo youth barely 11 who reluctantly goes back to his maternal grandmother on the reservation while his parents work out the details of their divorce. Benny is a city kid who grew up in San Diego. His experiences are with action figures and movies, seeing Shamu on his Seaworld annual pass, and the music of Fleetwood Mac. The grandmother (Sarah H. Natani) is a person who has steadfastly refused to learn and speak English, is intimate with the Navajo ways, determined to pass them on and who weaves traditional Navajo rugs. A depressed and disgruntled Uncle (Martin Sensmeier) shares the trailer space and is trying to subsist on the fading trades of the cowboy- sheep herding and rodeos, particularly bull riding. He’s not good enough at either and takes out his frustrations on his mother, Benny, and the trailers other occasional inhabitant, a Navajo girl of Benny’s age whose nickname is Frybread Face (Charley Hogan). The two provide all the title interactions.

Frybread Face function as both spirit guide and translator. She assimilates Benny back to the Navajo ways and language. She’s the translator that relates the ancestral wisdom of the grandmother to the other lost members of the tribe, Benny and his Uncle. She teaches Benny some essential Navajo concepts, even teaches him to drive. Benny in turn enthralls her with stories of Shamu and Marvel lore.

There are hints that Benny may be gay. Luther never really confirms or denies this. This is just another well observed detail that gently builds and adds to the story, the gentle cultural awakenings happening, the memories forming, showing rather than explaining how they became persistent and dominant.

Frybread Face and Me is heartfelt, at times earnest, overfamiliar in the way that the truly authentic always is. It gets a 3.5 out of 5 or a B+. It’s streaming on Netflix.

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Credits:

Directed by

Billy Luther

Written by

Billy Luther

Produced by

Chad Burris

Starring

• Keir Tallman
• Charley Hogan
• Sarah H. Natani
  • Martin Sensmeier
  • Kahara Hodges

Cinematography

Peter Simonite

Edited by

Fred Koschmann

Music by

Ryan Beveridge

Production

companies

• Indion Entertainment
  • REI Co-op Studios

Distributed by

ARRAY

Release dates

• March 11, 2023(SXSW)
• November 24, 2023

Running time

82 minutes[1]

Country

United States

Language

English

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