The truth about Tully is that it used to be called The Truth About Tully.
That’s the title under which this little independent film was shown nearly 21/2 years ago at the Toronto International Film Festival. In the meantime, another movie called The Truth About Charlie opened so, now, to avoid confusion, this one’s just called Tully.
That it has taken Tully, which opens today, so long to secure a commercial booking is both a lesson in the vagaries of the indie-film world and a tribute to the tenacity of first-time director Hilary Birmingham and Annie Sundberg, with whom she co-produced it.
An obvious labor of love, this gentle, sometimes-affecting coming-of-ager tells the tale of the Coates clan, Tully Coates Jr. (Anson Mount), his kid brother Earl (Glenn Fitzgerald) and the head of the household, Tully Sr. (Bob Burrus).
Ever since Tully Sr. lost his wife, he has raised the boys on his own on their small family farm. The boys are young adults now, and Tully Jr. is eager to help manage the farm. Yet for some mysterious reason, the elder Tully doesn’t seem to want to let him.
A young Travolta with a strong jaw and bedroom eyes, Tully Jr. amuses himself with casual romances. Lately, he’s been seeing April, a wild thing whose favorite place to canoodle is the hood of a car.
But then Tully starts to notice Ella (Julianne Nicholson), an easygoing neighbor with a freckled imp’s face and quiet sort of spunk. Ella’s dogged sincerity forces Tully to take her — and himself — more seriously than he ever knew he could.
Based on Tom McNeal’s short story, “What Happened to Tully,” and written by Birmingham and Matt Drake, the film is at its best in these early sections when we’re getting to know the characters and sorting out their relationships.
The tone is relaxed and the humor seems organic. The actors relate to each other with the sort of ease that usually indicates a director who knows how to make her performers feel like an ensemble. There’s something genuinely fraternal, for example, in the way Tully and Earl goof around with each other and sometimes temporarily get their feelings hurt.
Unfortunately, Tully turns out to be one of those stories about dark family secrets that suddenly emerge in disturbing ways. That’s what that “The Truth About” business was all about.
The more “truth” we discover, the less involving and more formulaic the movie becomes. It loses its distinctive tone and turns into turgid melodrama.
Before that starts to happen, though, there’s something about filmmaker Birmingham’s style that seems like a fresh new voice.
Tully is flawed but promising, and that’s the truth too.
