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"Tully,"
an independent first feature that has picked up several film
festival awards in the last two years, has many of the volatile
ingredients of a Sam Shepard play. Set in Nebraska, it focuses
on a grimly taciturn farmer obsessed with his dead wife, and
his two grown sons who have an edgy, competitive relationship.
Yet in its lyrical tone and concentration on the subtleties
of relationships, the movie couldn't be more different from
a Shepard drama in which every emotion is wired to explode.
There is no mythic superstructure to unravel, just a realistic
portrait of contemporary farm folk living their lives in the
shadow of a crisis.
This small, beautifully acted movie, directed by Hilary Birmingham,
who wrote the screenplay with Matt Drake, was adapted from a
short story by Tom McNeal. Ms. Birmingham, who comes from a
documentary background, is a former associate of Barbara Kopple.
And "Tully," which opens today in the New York metropolitan
region and Los Angeles, has the loose-jointed sprawl and low-key
tone of cinéma vérité.
As deliberately paced as a late-afternoon amble around a homestead,
the movie occasionally stops in its tracks to take a deep breath
and soak in more of the rural atmosphere. Although this tendency
to dawdle may frustrate viewers accustomed to a barrage of visual
stimulation, the movie's unhurried rhythm eventually works a
quiet spell, and after a while you find yourself settling back,
adjusting to the film's bucolic metabolism and appreciating
its eye and ear for detail.
The story revolves around the older brother, Tully Coates Jr.
(Anson Mount), a handsome,
magnetic troublemaker who is catnip to the local women. A bully
to his gentler younger brother, Earl (Glenn
Fitzgerald), and a thorn in the side of his secretive father,
Tully Coates Sr. (Bob Burrus),
Tully Jr. is a hard worker who is champing at the bit for more
responsibility and authority in running the farm.
Despite these tensions, life on the Coates property seems to
be going along fairly smoothly. Then, out of the blue, Tully
Sr. receives a notice that he owes $300,000. His farm, which
has been in the family for generations, is suddenly in imminent
danger of foreclosure.
Tully Sr. consults a lawyer but keeps the terrible news from
his sons, who sense that something is wrong. Initially, the
debt appears to be a case of mistaken identity. But a cursory
investigation reveals that the sums owed are hospital bills
incurred by Tully's wife, Irene, who did not really die as he
had told his sons. After she abandoned the family when Earl
was a young boy, Tully Sr. never bothered to get a divorce.
Irene (Kathryn Gayner)
never appears in the film, but she is shown in a photo. And
as the story goes along, her presence begins to hover over the
characters. Glamorous, self-dramatizing and fascinated by movie
stars, she was the last person on earth who should have ended
up the wife of a farmer.
Another strand of the story follows Tully Jr.'s deepening relationship
with Ella Smalley (Julianne
Nicholson), a neighbor who has recently returned to the
area after college to become a veterinarian. At the beginning
of the movie, Ella is hanging around Earl (whether they're sweethearts
is left unclear). She is well aware of Tully Jr.'s reputation
as a Don Juan, and steers clear of him until he starts making
friendly overtures. At the same time, he is carrying on with
April Reece (Catherine Kellner),
a tough, sexually possessive stripper with a viper's tongue.
"Tully" lingers in gray areas that few movies take
the time to explore. As Tully Jr. and Ella circle each other
warily, it studies the nuances of a relationship that's still
in that uncertain place halfway between friendship and romance.
Both actors, but especially Ms. Nicholson, who is luminous in
an utterly natural way, capture the tension between the arrogant
seducer accustomed to using women and throwing them away and
a woman who sees the possibility of a deeper connection but
must weigh the risks of becoming involved.
Even when the story takes a sudden, tragic turn, "Tully"
retains a stoic, observational distance. And after that tragedy,
a tentativeness that until then had seemed refreshingly naturalistic
feels more like timidity. But if "Tully" is finally
afraid to make dramatic leaps that might pull it together more
tightly, it still is an impressive debut; it looks and feels
like life.
–
Steve Holden
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/movies/01TULL.html
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