It’s not that common for Native American tribes to be spotlighted in Hollywood. They’ve occasionally been seen in the past, most recently in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” on Apple TV+ starring Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio. But they’re less common these days.
In “Fancy Dance”, a very pretty film released online this Friday on Apple TV +, we follow the story of Jax, also played by Lily Gladstone, a young woman today who lives from odd jobs and petty theft in a Seneca-Cayuga Tribe reservation in Oklahoma.
Her sister Tawi has disappeared without a trace and she must take care of her 13-year-old niece, Roki, lost in the face of this absence. Jax conducts his own investigation, as the police don’t seem to be taking matters into their own hands. The aunt and niece embark on a road trip in search of Tawi and to attend the “pow-wow”, a traditional festival where Roki is determined to dance, like every year.
Sensitive and nuanced
Director Érica Tremblay, for whom this is her first fiction feature film, chose to place the action within her original tribe, the Seneca-Cayuga. This people, who only number a few thousand individuals, are descended from the Iroquois. Originally, the Seneca and Cayuga, whose name means “people of the great swamp,” lived in what is now New York State. In the film, Jax and Roki often exchange words in Cayuga. In reality, it is rare for members of the community to speak to each other in this language. Only a few dozen people still use it.
The director also addresses the scourge of the disappearance of young indigenous women, on the rise in recent years, already addressed in 2022 in the series “Alaska Daily”, by Tom McCarthy with Hilary Swank. In some communities, these disappearances, often murders, are ten times higher than those of the rest of the population and most of the cases are not solved. The cause? The complexity of the distribution of police and judicial powers on the reserves.
Sensitive and nuanced, “Fancy Dance” touches the heart. Lily Gladstone is impeccable. The relationship between the aunt, protective and determined, and her niece, who takes flight, slowly leaving childhood to be confronted with the harshness of life, is overwhelming. The images are very beautiful, the subject delicate, nothing is superfluous.
a film by Erica Tremblay, with Lily Gladstone, Isabel Deroy-Olson (1h30).
