While Killers of the Flower Moon dealt with the historical travesties of Indigenous indignities, the newly released Fancy Dance—also starring Academy Award nominee Lily Gladstone—brings to light the inequalities and inhumanities faced by Indigenous culture in America, especially in Oklahoma.
But above all, it’s one of the best—maybe the best—films I have seen all year.
Directed by Oklahoma filmmaker Erica Tremblay, the film touches on numerous aspects of being truly Indigenous in this brutalized landscape, from the removal of children from their homes to the omnipresence of law enforcement, to the crisis of missing and murdered women.
Despite these dire themes, the film’s titular fancy dance serves as a tribute to the resilience, grace, and strength of Indigenous people in the face of such hardships.
The “fancy dance”—a traditional Indigenous dance that remains largely misunderstood by outsiders—is central to the story of Seneca-Cayuga tribal member Jax (Gladstone) and her niece, Roki (Isabel DeRoy-Olson), as they embark on a journey of spiritual healing.
Roki’s mother has been missing for two weeks, and she hopes to reunite with her at a powwow in Oklahoma City. With Jax as her caregiver on the reservation, they lead hardscrabble lives, scraping together what they can without harming others. They do their best to survive.
Unbeknownst to Roki, Jax is also searching for her sister, suspecting her disappearance may be linked to nearby meth-addicted oil workers. Unfortunately, little hope is found as law enforcement, state police, and the FBI can’t—or won’t—help.
When Jax’s white father Frank (Shea Whigham) takes lawful custody of Roki, Jax sneaks her out, and together they head to Oklahoma City. Along the way, they contend with Amber alerts, wanted posters, and police pursuit, all while grappling with the possible murder of Roki’s mother.
While this might seem like a TV movie of the week to most people, rarely has our culture expanded to take on the honest brutality and immense suffering that most Natives go through with the generational genocide of our people, all with a smile on our face.
Without a doubt, it’s a true vison of the dying culture that we have been trying to take back.
Making good on Killers of the Flower Moon, Gladstone fully immerses us with her taut performance, getting to the true cause of our pain and, even better, our victories. More than an actor playing a role, she imbues her performance with the same searing realism that we saw from her in Killers.
Also, attention must be paid to DeRoy-Olson. Never as cloying or superficial as Roki, she is one of the actors to look out for in the coming years, giving a deep stillness and emotional maturity to the role. Well above her years, she has a dramatic range that many actors her age would never fully embrace the way that she does.
Filmed from the outskirts of Tulsa to the First American Museum in Oklahoma City and all the roads in between, what it really comes down to is that as a filmmaker, Tremblay is a consummate storyteller who needs more of her stories told.
Fancy Dance is the truest distillation of both age-old wisdom and new-wave cinema coming together to create something that is very heartfelt and very true. If Fancy Dance is the new standard for Indigenous film, we are truly in a golden age.
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Follow Louis Fowler on Instagram at @louisfowler78.
