This is Lily Gladstone’s world. We’re just reporting on it. Nobody has had a better year than Lily Gladstone, from Killers of the Flower Moon to The Unknown Country to Quantum Cowboys to Fancy Dance, this signals nothing less than the fully-formed arrival of one of our best actors. Our Seattle Film Critics Society screening of Fancy Dance in partnership with SIFF was held with Gladstone in attendance and answering questions in a Q&A afterward. What the room felt like was an active recognition of this great talent, as we handed out an award recognizing Gladstone’s significant contribution to the film scene of the Pacific Northwest. What stood out is a deep care for doing the work, why it all matters, and a shared moment of exuberant joy over Fancy Dance, which besides everything else going on with Gladstone, is a great film on its own.
Fancy Dance is a great film, in fact, because of Erica Tremblay, a Seneca-Cayuga filmmaker making work that speaks directly to the culture it portrays. It takes the whole film, until the action finally erupts in the titular dance, in honor of those who are no longer with us. We have to talk about the ending outright because it is the emotional center of the film by which the rest of the film is weighed. It’s about the gorgeous costuming, the authentic Regalia made for the film, the victory of having spoken Cayugan language throughout the film, and the way Lily Gladstone and co-star Isabel Deroy-Olson, who is formally debuting here but has the performance of a pure natural talent.
Fancy Dance is not quite as free-form and quirky as the title suggests it will be. It’s a harsh story that portrays a grim reality. Gladstone’s Jax is in search of her sister. She’s gone missing and her daughter is left with Gladstone, as they search out what has happened, while preparing for a powwow put on by the reservation. What happens shatters their realities as social services are called in and attempt to remove Deroy-Olson’s Roki from Jax’s care. This launches a road trip, as the two try to escape the horrors of the justice system and how this colonized concept especially targets Indigenous women, showing through multiple lenses, how these women are failed by a system that allows them to go missing and then punishes them for those circumstances.
The whole way through, you can feel the tangible grief of community in it, the deep well of Indigenous compassion for those whom the society that has overtaken their land has subsequently failed. The film goes deeper than that, even, reaching into such lived-in specificity and ideas about Indigenous culture that it’s ultimately a rich text just for its compassionate wealth of detail about the culture.
The tapestry of cinema history is always changing. Who gets to be behind and in front of a camera is always shifting and films like Fancy Dance begin to paint a bright portrait of a new future for Indigenous talent. The team of Gladstone, Deroy-Olson, and Erica Tremblay make for a powerful unit. They so clearly inspire and bring out the best in each other, creating an ode to too-often-unseen representation and a genuinely terrific movie by any merits. The future of cinema is brighter with movies like Fancy Dance in it, movies you haven’t seen before, movies that we ought to see all the time.