Illustration by Michael DiMilo
Mother Daughter Dances: Review of Fancy Dance
It seems to be the era of the woman in film—and it’s about time. In the past few years, Barbie, Wicked Little Letters, She Said, Nyad, Promising Young Woman, and Drive Away Dolls have emerged at the forefront of a new wave of movies celebrating the struggles of women to attain equality, recognition, and justice.
Another promising trend in film has been the mainstreaming of marginalized populations, particularly Native Americans. Films like Killers of the Flower Moon, Wind River, Reservation Dogs, True Detective: North Country, and Dark Winds have explored the tribulations of Native American life, including poverty, drug abuse, and the disappearances and unsolved murders of indigenous young women. They also emphasize the power and strength of family and culture.
Erica Tremblay’s Fancy Dance is sort of a hybrid between these two trends. It is a film about survival, motherhood, sisterhood, culture, and the hardscrabble and sometimes desperate life on the reservation.
The film opens with Jax (Lily Gladstone) and her niece Roki (Isabel DeRoy-Olson) on a riverbank. Jax is searching the shore with a metal detector while her thirteen-year-old niece Roki is catching crayfish. On their walk back, they encounter a fly fisherman. As Jax distracts him while bathing in the river, Roki sneaks up behind the man and takes his car keys and wallet from his tacklebox. The two take off in his truck, drop it off at the local chop shop, and then hustle a few bucks at the local community center. It is a beautiful beginning that quickly establishes the rough hand-to-mouth existence of these two women.
Roki’s mom Tawi has been missing for two weeks. Knowing the history of missing indigenous women, Jax and her policeman brother J.J. (Ryan Begay) fear the worst but keep the truth from Roki, who expects her mother to dance with her at the upcoming big powwow in Oklahoma City. Her Aunt Jax has been taking care of Roki since her mother’s disappearance.
While Jax visits Tailfeathers, a local strip club where she connects with a friend, Roki watches videos of her mom and herself dancing at the powwow and starts preparing to go, believing her mother will meet her there.
Learning of the disappearance of Tawi, child protective services show up to check on Jax’s fitness to be Roki’s guardian. When her grandfather Frank (Shea Whigham), who is white, and his wife Nancy (Audrey Wasilewski) show up unexpectedly, Jax’s antenna go up. A few days later, CPS shows up and takes Roki, informing Jax that because of her criminal record, she is not a fit guardian. Roki is then placed with Frank and Nancy and taken off the reservation to live in a mostly white suburb.
Jax tries to fight for custody and visits Roki in her new home where it comes out that Frank and Nancy will not be taking her to the powwow. Later that evening, Jax appears at her window, telling Roki to get packed, that they are going to the powwow. She then proceeds to steal her father’s car. The two of them work their way toward their destination, stealing gas and filching goods along the way. While stealing from a woman’s purse in a department store dressing room, Roki discovers a gun and pockets it.
Jax phones her brother J.J. who tells her that Frank called the cops on her and now she is wanted for kidnapping and encourages her to turn herself in. Jax refuses, telling J.J. he and the cops should be looking for Tawi. Jax herself follows up on a couple of leads and relays the information to J.J. Meanwhile, the search intensifies, and during a convenience store stop, the clerk recognizes Roki. She panics and shoots the man, and then—confronting Jax with the fact she knows Tawi is dead, leaves her. Jax assumes she is captured by the police.
The next day, Jax gets confirmation from J.J. They have found Tawi’s body and tells Jax the police did not get Roki. Jax continues to the powwow in the hope of reuniting with her niece.
Fancy Dance has a very promising start. Jax and Roki are obviously very streetwise, cunning, and resourceful. They are survivors doing the best they can in a world hostile to Native Americans. DeRoy-Olson’s portrayal of Roki is both charming and somehow (considering her larcenous activities) innocent. Gladstone’s world-weary and bitter depiction of Jax is completely understandable—perhaps inevitable—yet she still manages to provide a spark of humor and joy when hanging with her niece. Her determination to find her sister, or more realistically, to find out what happened to her, is the spur in her side, only exacerbated by Roki’s desire to dance with her mom at the powwow. The chemistry between aunt and niece is palpable and endearing.
Jax finds herself pretty much alone in her quest to find Tawi. Local law enforcement maintains they have no jurisdiction while the FBI simply shrugs, at least until Jax forces their hand after kidnapping Roki.
Yet this promising premise fails to live up what Fancy Dance might have been. Instead of detailing the problem of missing Native American women or the prevalence of crime on the res (where exactly did Jax learn how to scam so well?) it becomes mired in cliches, stereotypes, and formulaic crime drama. J.J. (Ryan Begay) is little more than the stereotypical cynical cop which is not really Begay’s fault. He’s not given that much to do.
The passing nods to Native American culture, including a group of women searching and calling for Tawi, and a ceremony celebrating Roki’s first period, and the powwow itself, seem to be mostly window dressing and hardly integral to the story. The emphasis on the horrible epidemic of missing Native American women is addressed, but outside of seeing Jax’s frustration and law enforcement’s ineptitude—also a cliché—it is also glossed over.
The substance of Fancy Dance is familial relationships. The lengths that Jax goes to both find her sister and ensure that her niece can do the mother-daughter dance at the powwow speaks volumes to the power of women in this culture. Gladstone exemplifies an emotional strength and steely dedication to get what she wants. She risks, and probably earns, hard time for her deeds.
It is too bad that this film sunk into formulaic movie narratives. Its subject matter needs to be treated, as it was in Dark Wind and True Detective: North Country, as more than one person’s family problem. The rather limp screenplay is redeemed—at least to some degree—by some phenomenal performances. Lily Gladstone is a true gem of an actress, Isabel DeRoy-Olson is a definite up-and-comer, and Shea Whigham is one of the most underrated character actors working today.
Fancy Dance is a decent film. It is an entertaining mystery that unfortunately gets bogged down in tired ideas, which is a shame. It could have been so much better.