Fancy Dance

Erica Tremblay's debut feature stars Lily Gladstone as a half-native American woman with a checkered history as a petty thief and former meth dealer living on the Seneca–Cayuga reservation. Gladstone's Jax lives with her stripper sister Tawi and thirteen-year-old niece Roki. But when Tawi, who has a history of disappearing unexpectedly, vanishes a couple of weeks before the Grand Nation Powwow in Oklahoma City, Jax fears the worst. The Indian tribal police, including Jax's half-brother JJ, have given up searching and turned matters over to the FBI, which has little interest in looking for a missing Native American stripper. Worse, Jax and Tawi's estranged father, Frank, and his wife have decided to go after custody of Roki. After the girl is removed from her home and community, her Auntie Jax takes matters into her own hands.

Gladstone brings the same distinctly quiet and somber screen charisma that enabled Certain Woman, The Unknown Country, and Killers of the Flower Moon to this tale of family connection, disappeared Indigenous women, and an uncaring legal system. Structured like a low-energy manhunt road picture that still manages to be tense and suspenseful, this is the kind of story we know isn't going to end happily. So, the conclusion Tremblay and co-writer Michiana Alise come up with is all the more effective and powerful. Shea Whigham gives an excellent turn as the distant, conflicted father, Frank, and Isabel Deroy-Olson is wonderful as Roki, a young girl on the verge of adolescence who is trying to piece together what's happening in her family. But the film belongs to Gladstone, whose effortless star quality continues to surprise and inspire.