| Tully\r\nStarring Anson Mount and Julianne Nicholson. Directed by Hilary Birmingham. Written by Hilary Birmingham and Matt Drake, based on Tom McNeal’s story. Not rated. |
|
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
|
|
|
|
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
|
|
Farmer’s Insurance
A first-time filmmaker makes a striking debut with the slice-of-life drama Tully.
By KRISTIAN LIN
One of the crucial jobs of a movie critic, especially one at an alternative publication, is to alert moviegoers to good films that might fly under the radar because of no big-name stars, a low budget, and a story with no obvious hook. Tully fits all those descriptions. It moves at a deliberate pace that’s proper to its setting, and even though its characters undergo fairly huge life experiences, they themselves only change incrementally.
The movie’s title character is Tully Coates Jr. (Anson Mount), who lives and works on the small Nebraska farm owned by his father (Bob Burrus). The laconic Tully Sr. harbors a secret, as men of few words are wont to do. He has told his two sons that their mother died when they were young, but she actually left him without ever giving him a divorce, and her unpaid bills have caused a collection agency to place a lien on the farm. Tully Jr. knocks around in blissful ignorance of this as he spends his free evenings drinking beer and chasing local women. These include Ella Smalley (Julianne Nicholson), a veterinary student who has known him her whole life and knows his reputation yet can’t resist him for some reason.
First-time director/co-writer Hilary Birmingham is good at showing how her story’s rural setting is reflected in each major characters’ psychological makeup: Tully Jr.’s live-for-the-moment philosophy born from the lack of anything to do, Tully Sr.’s combination of experience and naïveté, and Ella’s goal-oriented work ethic. Using a low-key visual style and dialogue-dependent scenes that unfurl at an appropriately slow pace, Birmingham does justice to the complexity of these people.
The actors render the characters impressively. Mount registered nothing as a serial killer’s victim in Urban Legend: Final Cut or Britney Spears’ boyfriend in Crossroads, but here he’s alert, expressive, and charismatic — you can see why the local women consider him catnip. Meanwhile, Nicholson is fresh and appealing, and her unconventional attractiveness is put to far better use than it is in her role on tv’s Presidio Med or her brief stint on the dying days of Ally McBeal. Making his film debut is Burrus, an actor from Louisville, Ky.’s regional theater scene, and he touchingly depicts Tully Sr.’s private pain and his vain hope that his wife may come back to him.
The independent film journals these days are full of laments about the death of indie film, but what they’re really referring to is the New York-based scene that flourished in the 1990s. The times have changed, and Tully is an example of what a low-budget indie film looks like now. With its intelligent storytelling, honest acting, and a plot that doesn’t depend on a gimmick, it’s proof that good filmmaking can still flourish outside Hollywood.
Email this Article...
