Fancy Dance

Jax lives on the reservation and gets by on small work, some of it not legal. Her sister has disappeared. Months have passed and the official investigation is not moving; nobody is looking and the file sits. Jax looks after her sister's daughter Roki. The child is waiting for her mother to come back and wants to dance with her at a coming ceremony. Social services step in; Jax has a record and a decision is made to place the child with her white grandfather. Jax will not accept it. She takes Roki and sets off. Erica Tremblay directs and co-wrote the screenplay. Lily Gladstone plays Jax and Isabel DeRoy-Olson plays Roki; Shea Whigham is in the cast. It is an American production. The film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival and Apple took the distribution. Its ground is a real problem; the failure to investigate the disappearance and killing of Native women in America has long been a public matter. The narrative also shows the question of jurisdiction; the division between reservation, state and federal authorities affects the investigation directly. The film uses the Cayuga language and it works inside the narrative as a bond. The director is from the Seneca-Cayuga community and the narrative is built from an inside view. Lily Gladstone's performance carries the picture and the character is not shown as sympathetic. Its limit is structure; the road film shape is familiar and the last section speeds up. Who it is for: viewers who like American independent cinema and Native narratives. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the pace slow, and the ending left open.