Frybread Face & Me

Directed by Billy Luther, Frybread Face & Me follows Keir Tallman’s Benny as he’s sent to stay with his grandmother on a Navajo reservation. It’s a familiar premise that’s employed to mostly compelling and agreeable effect by Luther, as the filmmaker, armed with his own script, delivers a gentle, lighthearted coming-of-age story that benefits from its solid performances and engaging atmosphere – with, in terms of the former, Tallman’s stirring turn as the affable protagonist matched by his various costars. (Charley Hogan, cast as the titular Frybread Face, offers up impressively lived-in work that’s heightened by her genuine chemistry with Tallman.) The episodic narrative is, as a result, not nearly as problematic (or momentum-killing) as one might’ve feared, and it doesn’t hurt, certainly, that Luther has loaded the proceedings with compelling interludes and sequences (eg Benny and Frybread Face must drive a car to capture a wayward sheep). By the time the satisfying closing stretch rolls around, Frybread Face & Me has cemented its place as an entertaining endeavor that paints a refreshingly positive picture of life within an indigenous reservation.

*** out of ****