Critic Reviews

From the careful casting of Navajo actors — vital not only to representation but when it comes to speaking the language — to its honest look into rez life without any Hollywood spin, Frybread Face and Me isn't just a joy to watch but spells a bright future for Luther after this narrative feature debut.

If you have been fiending all year for a quality drama that shares a different world, then Frybread Face and Me is what you have been waiting for. Luther’s deft screenplay ably gets across a lot of complicated family business in just a few strokes.

What Frybread Face and Me lacks in drama, it makes up for in a boundless affection for its characters and an appreciation for the everyday details of their lives.

Pickles in a bag, runaway sheep, dusty roads, the same movie over and over until the tape wears out—these are the sense memories that remind the filmmaker who he is and where he comes from. To share it with the world in this way is an act of profound generosity and love.

Luther, who identifies as gay, never explicitly assigns labels to these young characters, which makes perfect sense in a story that openly embraces freedom and tenderness. Here’s hoping for many more films from this sensitive, nuanced talent.

It’s 1990 and a summer that initially smacks of exile and punishment becomes one of discovery — self-discovery to be sure, but also cultural and familial.

Luther doesn’t hit the story’s discovering-one’s-sexuality elements hard, and serves up little dollops of tribal wisdom that play as weary bromides. Benny should be hunting for “hózhǫ́,” a life that will make him happy and content.

The movie is overfamiliar and earnest, but you can’t accuse it of not being heartfelt.

The film is playing with familiar tropes along a formulaic path, but it’s simply too endearing to dismiss outright.