'Fancy Dance' review: Lily Gladstone drama is a special movie that shouldn't be missed

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Lily Gladstone further establishes her reputation as one of the best actors in the business with “Fancy Dance,” a movie streaming on Apple TV+ (after a brief theatrical run).

The “Killers of the Flower Moon” Oscar nominee plays Jax, a member of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma. Her sister disappears, leaving her to care for teenage niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson).

But then Child Protective Services intervenes, determining Jax's drug-dealing past makes her an unfit guardian. After Roki is sent to live with her estranged grandfather Frank (Shea Whigham), Jax sneaks away with her in Frank's car, on a journey to find Roki's mother and to attend a powwow.

“Fancy Dance” marks the feature filmmaking debut of Erica Tremblay (“Reservation Dogs”), a Seneca-Cayuga member herself.

MY SAY An enormous societal tragedy looms over “Fancy Dance,” with its story of a family impacted like so many others by the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

But the power of the movie comes from the ways in which it translates this bigger picture into character-driven moments. It's carefully observed and thoughtful in how it constructs the internal universe shaped by the broader forces at play. 

A different and simpler story might have been driven solely by anger or another understandable but predictable emotion. This one finds its heart in the gray areas. Tremblay and her actors show us characters compelled to do reckless and inexplicable things for painstakingly human reasons.

Jax makes several bad decisions over the course of the movie, from running small-scale thefts and cons with her niece, to absconding with her and spurring an Amber Alert. 

But they're shaped by desperation and determination, by experiences everyone shares and those that are more narrowly tailored to this character: the weariness that comes with a constant struggle for happiness and the hardness sometimes required to just survive as a member of a marginalized group in modern-day America.

Gladstone has a particular gift for turning complex and hard-to-define emotional landscapes into something tangible and real. To convey such a richness of feeling in simple reaction shots, in quiet moments, in scenes where the real story happens below the surface: It's the sort of stuff that can't be taught, or even properly conveyed on the page. You have it, or you don't. And she has it.

In Deroy-Olson, her young co-star, Gladstone has a scene partner who shows much of the same innate understanding of how to let the camera in, to use close-ups and reacting and what's left unsaid in order to convey so much about coming-of-age at such a difficult personal moment.

Their performances align with the naturalistic vision conveyed by the filmmaker, who captures life on the reservation with meticulous attention to detail. And they allow for something greater and more transcendent, unlocking what the movie says about our capacity to persevere: There is great sadness and despair throughout “Fancy Dance,” but also equally strong feelings of love and joy.

BOTTOM LINE: This is a special movie. Don't miss it.