Fancy Dance: Film Review
After finding worldwide acclaim with Killers of the Flower Moon, it’s nice to see Lily Gladstone staying booked and busy with Fancy Dance.
In the drama, set in the Seneca-Cayuga Nation Reservation in Oklahoma, the Oscar nominee plays Jax Goodiron, who has been looking after her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) since her sister Tawi went missing. However, due to Jax’s criminal record, Roki is removed from her care and placed with her white grandfather Frank (Shea Whigham), even though he has been estranged from the family for years. Jax becomes determined to track down her sister so Roki can come home.
The Fancy Dance of the title refers to the annual powwow, a social gathering in Oklahoma City. Roki and Tawi are reigning champs of the mother-daughter dance and Roki keeps preparing their regalia for the highly anticipated event in the hope Tawi will be back in time.
With a whimsical title like Fancy Dance, I thought this was going to be a light-hearted dance movie so I wasn’t expecting a serious family drama mixed in with a crime procedural and on-the-run vibes. I think there must have been a title out there that better reflected the tone of the film.
Now that little quibble is out of the way, onto the meat of my review. Fancy Dance is good. I loved the script and the exploration of the surrogate mum-daughter relationship between Jax and Roki. They basically had that relationship already because Jax helped Tawi raise Roki in their shared house, so when she is taken to live with Frank, Jax feels like her daughter has gone.
Their dialogue is brought to life wonderfully by Gladstone and Deroy Olson, an impressive young newcomer. After finding fame as an innocent woman in Killers, it was refreshing to see Gladstone playing such a messy, complicated person. Jax has a criminal record and has taught Roki how to scam and steal – she isn’t the greatest role model but she still cares about Roki more than Frank ever will.
This film also had something to say about white privilege. Roki is taken out of the reservation to live with white people who could never understand her culture or the importance of the powwow. Also, federal agents are immediately on the case when Frank needs help finding Roki yet they have been highly uncooperative in the search for Tawi, an Indigenous woman who has been missing for weeks.
Although I wasn’t sold on the ending or the title, I enjoyed Fancy Dance a lot and can’t wait to see what Gladstone does next.
On Apple TV+ from Friday 28th June