Bull From the Perspective of a Former Rebel Teen

Listen to these songs as you read to enter the mindset of a rebel teen:

-       Teenage Girl By: Cherry Glazerr

-       Green Eyes By: Wavves

-       Youth By: Daughter

-       Wake Bake Skate By: FIDLAR

-       Mallrats (La La La) By: The Orwells

-       Idle Teen By: Marina and the Diamonds

-       Ride By: Lana Del Rey

The first time I smoked weed I was 13 years old. It was to celebrate my best friend’s 14^th birthday and I didn’t really feel anything. Pieces of the memory now glimmer to the surface from the depths I have buried them: the stark out of place Christmas decorations in the trashed shithole of an apartment we hung out in afterwards, the slick way one of my friends flicked a quarter to some stranger we passed in exchange for a cigarette, the shabby trench coats of the thirty-year-old men who offered to sell us acid on the ride home. I don’t know exactly why, but I exploded into my teenage years kicking and screaming. 13 and 14 were also the years I smoked my first cigarette, got a stick and poke tattoo, pierced my cartilage with a sowing needle—just to name a few examples of my self-inflicted mutiny. So, when I watched Annie Silverstein’s Bull, I couldn’t help but recognize so much of my past self in the rebellious and lost 14-year-old Krystal, and I couldn’t manage to articulate to my friends exactly why I couldn’t stop crying as I walked out of the theater.

Bull tells the coming of age story of Krystal, nicknamed Kris, in the unforgiving landscape of a poor suburb in Houston, Texas. She struggles to handle the pressure of taking care of her ailing grandmother, watching after her younger sister, and coping without her mom, who is in prison for reasons never explicitly said, but implied to be dealing drugs. One night, Kris breaks into the house of her neighbor, a retired bullfighter named Abe, where she throws a party and completely trashes the place. The next day Abe calls the police and they all agree that instead of arresting her, in order for Kris to atone for this act, she must do chores for Abe, despite her heartbroken plea of, “Can’t you just take me to juvy?” in what seems to be a twisted attempt to be closer to her mother. Over the course of a few weeks, an unlikely camaraderie blooms between the two and Abe tries to tame the metaphoric bull of Kris’s desolate spirit. Annie Silverstein offers us a story full of emotionally gutting realism, yet with just enough poetic flairs to fully exalt these themes of desperation and hope in a tale of woe from the impoverished American South.

I think the first moment I really became floored by the reality of this film was when Kris goes by the swimming hole to hang out with her friends. This scene shows actors that actually look 13 or 14 year old drinking and smoking, with all the usual cinematic glamor of partying peeled back to expose the real desperate escapism lying underneath. Kris’s need for distraction is really what drives her to do all the insubordinate things she does. The whole reason she even throws the party that she almost gets arrested for is because of her need to be desired by a boy. This narrative thread particularly devasted me, as I feel like any teenage girl can relate to yearning for male attention, which we are all programmed to think is the real source of our validation. And to have the fulfillment of this crush be this stupid boy shoving Kris’s hand down his gym shorts to jerk him off as he plays video games, not even looking at her or touching her, not even giving her the intimacy she desperately craves, quite simply, destroyed me. I would also just like to commend Amber Harvard for such an amazing performance. Even the attention to detail just with her appearance: from her dark circles to her empty gaged ears, to later in the film when she adds red streaks to her hair, just helped make her character ring all the more true.

However, I think the realism in Kris’s relationship with her mother is probably what got me the most. From the close-ups of them holding hands under the table during their visits, to the conversation on the phone where the mom says she wants a bacon cheeseburger and chocolate cake when she gets out, joking “I’m already fat,”, to their last conversation when the mom gets more prison time and Kris finally breaks down sobbing, realizing the fantasy of the ranch won’t happen, all of these moments were just so genuine. I felt like this storyline both reflected the rude awakening we all receive as we grow older and realize our parents are just as flawed and real as we are, and also the true powerlessness of the poor to escape our bleak circumstances.

While most of these examples are from Krystal’s side of the story, I still really enjoyed seeing the rodeo cowboy lifestyle in Texas. I commend Silverstein for showcasing an entire niche world I knew very little about. I also very much enjoyed the subversion of the common white savior trope where instead we had the black character, Abe, be the one actually doing the rescuing, using bull-riding as a way to resuscitate Kris’s hope for a future. And also I just loved the overarching motif of the bull. While I understand that the ending was confusing, I still felt like this dreamy diversion suited the story well. The film ends with Kris and Abe together in his yard standing with a white bull, possibly symbolizing death or the devil coming for Abe? I don’t fully understand it, but I don’t care, because I don’t really think that’s the point.

Even though this was the first film I saw at the festival, I waited to write this review as my last, because Bull meant so much to me. This film struct a chord in me that I’ve tried to hide and forget. There is a lot more I could say, but I’m already four words over the limit. I’m just so happy I got to thank Annie Silverstein first hand for giving me this visceral, heartfelt tragedy born from the American South.

Production company: Bert Marcus Film

US sales: 30WEST, info@30WEST.com/International sales: Film Constellation, sales@filmconstellation.com

Producers: Monique Walton, Bert Marcus, Heather Rae, Ryan Zacarias, Audrey Rosenberg

Screenplay: Annie Silverstein, Johnny McAllister

Production design: Meredith Lippincott

Editing: Miguel Schverdfinger, Todd Holmes

Cinematography: Shabier Kirchner

Music: William Ryan Fritch

Main cast: Rob Morgan, Amber Havard, Yolonda Ross