After stealing the show among Killers Of The Flower Moon’s star-studded lineup, it feels like all eyes are on Lily Gladstone, and for good reason. Following another standout role in Under The Bridge, they take center stage in Fancy Dance, a drama from director Erica Tremblay that portrays life on the Seneca-Cayuga Nation reservation in Oklahoma through an unflinchingly real, non-idealized lens. Through the film’s grounded depiction of this specific place, it explores both the generational pain and joy of those who live there, building towards quiet scenes of devastation that are further elevated by Gladstone’s nuanced performance.
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We follow Jax (Gladstone) and her teenage niece Roki (Isabel DeRoy-Olson), who are dealing with the recent disappearance of Roki’s mom, Tawi, in different ways: Jax raises hell so the Feds will finally take a look at the case, while Roki clings to the hope that her mother will miraculously show up in time for the upcoming powwow, a place where the two used to dance together. But as Jax turns over every stone in an increasingly desperate search for her sister, she receives word that past run-ins with the law threaten her ability to remain Roki’s guardian, eventually leading to the two going on the road.
From its first moments, Fancy Dance conveys an intimate understanding of what life on the reservation is like for our duo, conveying both a sense of community and the ongoing struggles of many who live there. While this is Tremblay’s first fiction feature, her past work as a documentarian is apparent in the borderline cinema verité style employed, as Carolina Costa’s camerawork captures Jax and Roki’s journey with an unvarnished eye, tenderly honing in on everyday details like a shared breakfast or a makeshift ceremony.
But beyond just conveying their close bond, this tendency towards realism also cuts the other way. We see how financial pressures weigh on the two, leading to casual shoplifting and carjacking in scenes that weaponize this general closeness, making it feel like we’re in the room as things teeter on the edge of collapse. By capturing both these halves, the good times and the bad, Tremblay wrings nuance out of this setting and makes it clear this story comes from a place of authenticity and empathy instead of emotional exploitation. Although Jax and Roki are trapped in a fraught situation, the searching camera and gentle piano keys of Samantha Crain’s score render moments of delight that evoke the fullness of their experience.
And, of course, what ties these sequences together are the performances of our two leads, Gladstone and DeRoy-Olson. Gladstone is unsurprisingly fantastic, leading the film with ease as they demonstrate Jax’s gruff bullheadedness and willingness to do nearly anything to track down her sister. They nail the character’s swagger and street smarts while still wringing out the layers of unprocessed grief underneath, sentiments that eventually burst forth in genuine outpourings of loss. Gladstone gets across these complicated, churning emotions whenever Jax questions another bystander about Tawi or looks at Roki through veiled pain, her vulnerability particularly visible during standout scenes with her seemingly on-and-off girlfriend Sapphire (Crystyle Lightning).
Meanwhile, DeRoy-Olson does a great job meeting pace with Gladstone by rendering Roki’s naivety and setting up awkward situations where Jax feels forced to paint a disingenuously rosy picture of her mom’s likely fate. While Roki engages in some classic “dumb movie kid” behavior, DeRoy-Olson’s portrayal makes these gaffes feel honest instead of a convenient plot device, eventually leading to a Chekov’s gun situation that creates the film’s most tense exchange.
Together, the pair’s experiences deftly convey a maelstrom of American injustices: We see the subtle and not-so-subtle forms of cultural erasure, from nosey white grandparents who want to pluck Roki from the reservation to structural discrimination around how missing Indigenous people cases are ignored by the police. At one point, they run into an ICE officer who insinuates the pair may be “illegal” immigrants—a particularly ironic notion given they’re descendants of those who’ve been long before Manifest Destiny and the ghostly thrall of American settler-colonialism spread west.
Similarly, Fancy Dance thoughtfully portrays the intersectional angle of how Native American women are devalued by a toxic combination of racism and misogyny, which extends from the implied violence of the central disappearance. Tremblay and Miciana Alise’s screenplay seamlessly weaves this commentary on various forms of ongoing colonialism into the narrative as Jax and Roki navigate unfair circumstances they’re all too familiar with, the picture’s trademark naturalism making these moments all the more tangible and unpleasant.
All that said, some stretches don’t coalesce, both in terms of plotting and character stakes. For instance, we don’t get a great idea of whether Roki is in denial about what’s probably happened to her mom or if she entirely believes Jax’s assuring words—it seems more likely to be the latter, but if that’s true, it severely underestimates how clever most kids are. Because of this, the final act’s schism between our central pair falls flat dramatically. Additionally, Jax’s increasingly dangerous search for her missing sister, which involves tracking down clues and eyewitnesses, doesn’t have enough space in this lean 90-minute flick, and these hard-nosed crime beats can be tonally at odds with the otherwise low-key sensibilities. And while the grounded presentation is one of the movie’s greatest strengths, there are some chunks in the middle where things nod off.
Still, despite these shortcomings, Fancy Dance drives at the particular pains and celebrations of its backdrop with a light touch. Thanks to Gladstone’s excellent performance and the film’s overriding eye for detail, it delves into an ongoing crisis with a humanistic outlook that feels worlds removed from the scandalizing vibe that so many true-crime thrillers employ for this type of narrative. There is honesty here; more than the lingering hurt, Fancy Dance also depicts the solidarity of this community, delighting in images of togetherness that rise in concert with its mourning—a poolside coming-of-age rite, jokes made in words outsiders can’t understand, and, especially, a dance with family.