If you’ve only recently started hearing about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, it is probably because you weren’t paying attention to news sources that have been covering it for decades now. Though, in the last year, there has been a slew of media addressing the horrifying crisis. Big profile projects headlined by well-known actors, like Alaska Daily and Three Pines, but Fancy Dance offers something those projects do not: perspective.
Co-written by Miciana Alise along with the film’s director Erica Tremblay, the pair centre the story in the indigenous/native community, their community. Not with outsider cops, as has been the trend with most of these other projects. In doing so, they’ve grounded the story differently, giving Fancy Dance a very different narrative lean. In what it chooses to give focus.
As much as Jax (played by Lily Gladstone) is trying to find out what happened to her sister, Tawi, it doesn’t stop her from celebrating an important milestone in Roki (played by Isabel Deroy-Olson, who was also in last year’s Three Pines), her niece’s life. Life goes on, it has to, even when tragedy is happening.
In addition to the search for the missing Tawi, the film centres around going to a powwow. Roki and her mother always perform in the mother-daughter dance there. Jax has promised Roki that her mother will be at the powwow and wouldn’t miss it, which is obviously a lie. We know Tawi is missing, and the promise of the powwow is just the last cling of hope. But when Roki is placed with her grandfather Frank (played by Shea Whigham) and Nancy (played by Audrey Wasilewski), his wife from later in life after Jax and Tawi’s mother died and he left the rez, they say they won’t take Roki to the powwow. In fact, Nancy immediately tries to replace her cultural connection to her mother and heritage with a pair of pink ballet shoes. It’s a little on the nose, but it sets us up to know exactly how the pair are going to react when Jax defies the court order and takes Roki in the middle of the night (her intention is to take her to the powwow, but she also uses the time on the road to seek clues on her sister’s whereabouts). I’m sure you can guess what they do, and it isn’t waiting for her to return or cover for Jax, who you’ll remember is Frank’s daughter and is in the process of grieving her missing sister while protecting her niece from feeling that loss. They also couldn’t figure out where they were heading, which means, they couldn’t even achieve basic listening because they were very specific about where they wanted to go earlier.
The eventual powwow scene is so sad and yet heartwarming as you see Jax step fully into the role of little mother to Roki, even if it will only be for that night before Roki gets taken away from her.
I remember Lily Gladstone being a standout in Certain Women, so I was pleased to see her in a starring role, and she did not disappoint. Isabel Deroy-Olson was a great scene mate and is definitely someone to watch.
Fancy Dance premiered at Sundance in the US Dramatic Competition section.
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