[TIFF 2023] FRYBREAD FACE AND ME -- Quaint, Charming Coming-of-Age Film With Great Representation

Review by Sean Boelman

Image Courtesy of TIFF.

Executive produced by Taika Waititi, Billy Luther’s directorial debut Frybread Face and Me takes familiar tropes and puts a refreshing spin on them thanks to its commitment to strong representation. Although it’s nothing to call home about, Frybread Face and Me is an indie crowd-pleaser that’s sure to leave a smile on your face.

Frybread Face and Me follows an 11 year old kid in 1990, obsessed with Fleetwood Mac, as he experiences culture shock when he is sent to spend the summer with his grandma in the heart of the Navajo Nation and his cousin who grew up on the rez. Native stories like this have recently been getting a larger spotlight, and it’s nice to see voices like Luther get such a notable platform. 

The coming-of-age genre is one of the most common in filmmaking, largely because of how universal of an experience growing up is. However, like so many great coming-of-age movies, Frybread Face and Me thrives in its cultural specificity and representation. Although the fish-out-of-water scenarios are a bit formulaic, they are done with so much authenticity that they work.

In what seems to be a true rarity these days, the biggest weakness of Frybread Face and Me is that it feels too short. When you take out the credits, the film is only about 75 minutes long. On the one hand, it does everything it needs to do. Still, it feels like the film could have been even more impactful had we gotten the chance to spend more time with these characters.

Where viewers will really start to feel this disconnect is the supporting characters. Although the protagonist is charming and compelling, even his eponymous cousin doesn’t get her due. The rest of his family is even more underdeveloped, with arcs that feel entirely conventional and are full of cliches.

There are also some interesting ideas floating around in the film about other aspects of the protagonist’s identity — such as his masculinity — but these are largely relegated to one-off scenes. Developing these themes further could have helped differentiate the film further from other coming-of-age flicks and give it a bit more substance.

This is the type of indie where you can tell the budget is being stretched a bit thin, but there is something undeniably charming about its scrappy nature. It’s also not a particularly stylized film, with a very straightforward approach that seems more interested in just telling the story than creating anything poetic with it.

Frybread Face and Me is a conventional and straightforward film, but it rides on its charm and authentic representation to be a mostly cute film. Although you’ve probably seen dozens of coming-of-age movies like this, it’s a solid addition to the canon thanks to its perspective.

Frybread Face and Me is screening at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, which runs September 7-17 in Toronto, Canada.

​Rating: 3.5/5