The Reel Review
Frustrated by a lack of action by the FBI, a Native American woman living on Oklahoma’s Seneca-Cayuga Reservation takes matters into her own hands to find out what has happened to her missing sister, while also trying to take care of her sister’s teenage daughter. Lily Gladstone (Flowers of the Killer Moon, The Unknown Country), Isabel Deroy-Olson and Shea Whigham star in this crime drama.
Co-writer/director Erica Tremblay touches on several themes in her feature film debut – systemic poverty and crime among Native Americans, the shockingly high number of missing Native American women, and a frustrating reluctance (or unwillingness) by authorities to investigate those missing persons cases. Gladstone’s Jax, who has a criminal record, takes the investigation into her own hands as she discovers her sister, who was working as a stripper, was also dealing drugs. She triggers an “Amber alert” when she defies guardianship orders giving her father (Whigham) custody of her niece, taking her to the upcoming annual powwow in Oklahoma City that features a mother-daughter dance.
The slow pacing and a frustratingly implausible Thelma and Louise-type third act will frustrate viewers looking for more realism, but for those with the patience to look past that, Fancy Dance is an important film about the difficult challenges faced by many Native Americans, particularly women and girls. The ending is a poignant one.
REEL FACTS
• Lily Gladstone filmed Fancy Dance during breaks in filming 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination.
• The National Crime Information Center says that in 2020 alone, there were nearly 5300 reports of missing Native American and Alaska Native women and girls – 10 times higher than the national average. One of the contributing factors is the patchwork laws surrounding tribal, state and federal agencies which leads to bureaucratic gaps over which agency should investigate each case.
• The Seneca-Cayuga Nation, in far northeastern Oklahoma, is one of three federally-recognized tribes of Seneca people in the United States. It has approximately 5000 members. There are fewer than 100 fluent speakers of Cayuga, which the cast in Fancy Dance spoke.
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