Movie Review
Lily Gladstone leads fine cast in Native American drama Fancy Dance
Isabel Deroy-Olson and Lily Gladstone star in Fancy Dance.
Movies focused on Native Americans are in too short supply, and those that do get made tend to focus on the sins of the past, not the realities of modern-day life for them. After getting an Oscar nomination for one of those former types of stories in Killers of the Flower Moon, actor Lily Gladstone is back with a latter type in Fancy Dance.
Gladstone plays Jax Goodiron (Lily Gladstone), who lives on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma with her niece, Roki (Isabel Deroy-Wilson). Tawi, Roki’s mother and Jax’s sister, has gone missing, leaving Jax to take care of her as best she can. As we soon see, though, that care involves lots of scamming and stealing, an unsavory way of surviving that is unfortunately part of their reality.
Tawi’s disappearance and Jax being deemed an unfit guardian causes Child Protective Services to place Roki with her white grandfather, Frank (Shea Whigham), and his wife, Nancy (Audrey Wasilewski). Knowing how important it is for Roki to attend the tribe’s annual powwow, where she has danced with her mother several times before, Jax sneaks her out of Frank’s house. However, Jax’s determination to find out what happened to Tawi, as well the authorities issuing an Amber Alert for Roki, makes their journey extra difficult.
Written and directed by Erica Tremblay (a member of the Seneca-Cayuga tribe herself), and co-written by Miciana Alise, the film does a solid job of showing the challenges Jax and others like her face in the world without making the story overly maudlin. Jax is shown to be a hustler from the very first scene in the film, and the fact that she ropes Roki into her schemes makes the crimes they commit difficult to swallow for viewers.
But each of the misdeeds is in service of helping their goals, and are also weighed against the trauma they are experiencing with Tawi’s disappearance. Tremblay has a subtle touch when it comes to the larger topic of missing Native women not being a priority for law enforcement. She makes the shameful idea a constant part of the film without pressing so hard that the outrage turns into a sermon.
Even though the film tells a very specific story, the experience of the various family members is universal enough to keep it from being siloed off from the rest of the world. Nearly everyone can relate to the bond Jax and Roki share, the pain of losing a loved one, or the frustration of a parent not living up to expectations. If anything, the details of being part of the Seneca-Cayuga tribe make those elements even more powerful.
While Gladstone was worthy of her Oscar nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon, the character she played was often hard to read. Although she’s not very expressive in this role, she brings all the requisite emotions out of the character, giving her a lot of depth. Deroy-Olson, who resembles a young Natalie Portman, gives a lived-in performance despite her relative lack of acting experience. Whigham, Wasilewski, and Ryan Begay as JJ, a tribal police officer, also bring a lot to their supporting roles.
Streaming channels like Apple TV+ have been part of the decline in attendance at movie theaters, but the big positive they have brought is the ability for films like Fancy Dance to find a wider audience than they might otherwise. It also gives fine actors like Gladstone and Deroy-Olson more opportunities to showcase their talents, hopefully leading to even more roles in the future.
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Fancy Dance is now playing in select theaters and streaming on Apple TV+.
