In rural Texas, 14-year-old Krystal (newcomer Amber Havard) causes enough trouble to make her grandmother (Keeli Wheeler) crazy. From taking her sister Chance (Keira Bennett) to the river, to carousing with local kids, her disaffected life is largely overshadowed by her mother Janice’s long-term incarceration, and in turn, punctuated by small acts of rebellion. The breaking point occurs when Krystal breaks into her neighbor Abe Turner’s (Rob Morgan) house to throw a party. But when Abe decides to grant leniency, the unlikely friendship forged in the aftermath becomes a refuge for both of them, as Abe introduces Krystal to the adrenaline-fueled world of bull-riding cowboys and rodeos. While Krystal is out of sight of her parent-by-proxy, though, she’s lured by more nefarious influences — her delinquent friends who smoke, drink, and toss around racial epithets with the casual arrogance of much older adults, as well as the oxycodone dealer who furtively suggests there are other, faster ways of making money.
Director Annie Silverstein steers “Bull,” premiering at Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard, dangerously close to the world of unimaginative platitudes. Luckily, she pulls the reins when it matters most. The result is a sensitive, if occasionally orthodox, treatment of a compassionate friendship enacted in the face of societal apathy.
Expectedly, as the film’s central conceit, bull-riding is repurposed for so many metaphors, to the point of bordering on overwrought. “Get up fast when you fall,” Abe tells Krystal as she mounts a bull, delivering life advice barely disguised as bull-riding tips. “I’ll be there.” Silverstein and Johnny McAllister’s screenplay often haphazardly buries bits of wisdom into the lexicon of bull-riding, melding into truism. Their dialogue seems only a stone’s throw away from aphorisms in the vein of “get back on the horse that bucked you.”
Ironically, the unlikely friendship narrative is fairly conventional: By Abe’s first appearance — irritably confronting Krystal about one of his chickens that her dog has killed — Silverstein makes it obvious that he’s principally there to incite Krystal’s coming-of-age arc. The central bond of “Bull” also aligns itself along racial lines, as Abe introduces Krystal to a community of Black bull-riders, while her white friends colloquially use the n-word. With last year’s “Green Book” Oscar win in the collective cultural memory, Abe and Krystal’s friendship prompts some worry of another Magical Negro narrative, in which a Black character functions in service of a white protagonist’s emotional development.
Yet to her credit, Silverstein’s treatment of race — which is, by and large, simply not making it a talking point of the film — seems to work. She also keeps a tight rein on the film’s emotionalism, deftly handling Abe and Krystal’s admittedly unsentimental relationship, a welcome relief from a mawkish friendship that would quickly reveal itself to be a screenwriter’s creation. It helps that Havard and Morgan are natural screen partners, capably developing a rapport that, if not entirely original, at least gestures at authenticity. Even the parental element of their relationship is subdued; Abe is less of a father figure and more of a weary, older mentor who happens to be there, whose various physical ailments restrict him from the action he craves in the arena. Silverstein also devotes increasing solo screentime, and by extension, depth of character, to Abe. A tryst with an old flame (Yolonda Ross) and a painkiller dependency sketch the off-screen contours of his world.
For a festival lately riddled with concerns about female representation, Silverstein focalizes the world of “Bull” through a decidedly female gaze, with camerawork that aligns itself with Krystal’s keen regard. In the absence of her mother, who (at least in Krystal’s estimation) seems unwilling to correct her behavior and leave jail, Krystal is beset on all sides with different kinds of masculine influence, some more detrimental than others. From the drug dealer to the adolescent video gamer who brusquely demands a handjob, it’s clear that Krystal’s life could easily veer toward her mother’s life trajectory. Even Abe, for all his protective tendencies, has his own problems to corral.
Yet Silverstein wisely never supplies a conclusive answer. It’s not difficult to see that these characters fall on the margins of society, struggling with institutions that have forgotten about them. “I saw you, Kris,” a schoolteacher tells Krystal resignedly, at one point in the film. “I’m just to the point where I don’t care anymore.” A simpler, more saccharine iteration of “Bull” would’ve pointed to bull-riding as Krystal’s ticket to freedom. But “Bull” is no fairy tale. It’s a hardscrabble tale of one singular bond amidst a landscape of socio-economic struggle. To borrow a quote from Abe, “Don’t get more American than that.” [B+]
