‘Fancy Dance’ review: A small film that packs a big punch, thanks to Oscar-nominee Lily Gladstone

Anchoring the independent movie “Fancy Dance” (streaming on Apple TV+), Lily Gladstone plays Jax, a member of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma. Her voice is low. She’s partial to baggy sleeveless T-shirts and jeans. Her personality is matter-of-fact and she doesn’t smile much, but she has a droll sense of humor. She is forthright and earnest and suffers no fools. And she’s not above larcenies, petty or otherwise, to put money in her pocket.

Jax is also looking after her 13-year-old niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson). The girl’s mom is Jax’s sister, Tawi, and she hasn’t been home for a couple of weeks. Jax is doing her best to shield Roki from the gravity of the situation: Tawi is missing and nobody seems concerned. The unspoken assumption is too awful — but also too hauntingly commonplace — for anyone to bother verbalizing: Tawi may be dead.

There’s a powwow coming up and Roki is sure her mother will be back in time for them to dance together. Jax doesn’t want to dampen that hope, but things get considerably more complicated when someone from child protective services shows up — “No, there ain’t no father, just the three of us here,” she tells the woman — and then Jax’s estranged white father (Shea Whigham) arrives, uninvited, with the woman he married several years back after Jax’s mother died. His abandonment is still raw and front of mind. “I had to move on with my life,” he says. “I tried to take you and your sister with me, but you chose to stay here.” Jax is unimpressed with this excuse: “Why would we leave our home?”

The sentiment behind those words is dismissed when he and his wife unilaterally decide Roki would be better off with them instead. Jax has a criminal record and that’s all the excuse the state needs to rubber-stamp this forced removal. Roki doesn’t even know these people, but she’s bundled off with them — and off the reservation — all the same.

Since no one else has bothered, Jax starts making inquiries about her sister, and just the act of asking becomes a dangerous proposition. With the exception of a woman Jax is casually seeing who works at a local strip club called Tail Feathers, people either tense up or mock Jax when she shows them a flyer with Tawi’s photo on it. I love the way Gladstone plays these moments; she is stubborn and stands her ground, but flickers of wariness and alarm play across her face. She’s willing to take risks because she’s desperate for answers. That doesn’t mean she’s fearless.

Deroy-Olson is equally terrific. In the early going, we see her wearing a candy necklace, which underscores just how young she is despite some of the streetwise shoplifting tactics she’s picked up from Jax. She trusts her aunt implicitly and their bond is given a wonderful poetic description when Roki asks Jax about the Cayuga word for “aunt.” Director and co-writer Erica Tremblay told IndieWire about the origins of that scene: “I was studying Cayuga eight hours a day, and then writing at night. We were learning familial words. So I learned that the word for mother is knó:ha and the word for auntie is knohá:ah, which means ‘little mother.’ I was just so inspired to make Jax a little mother.”

The reality of their situation is grim. There may not be a lot of tenderness around them, but Jax and Roki’s relationship is filled with it, which is how Tremblay (with co-writer Miciana Alise) has made a movie that feels so alive but also human-scaled. Jax isn’t the type to sit back and wait, so she eventually collects Roki in the middle of the night in order to take her to the powwow. Technically this means they’re on the run and her father reports her. When their road trip makes the news, Jax can’t help but note the irony: The FBI is out looking for them, but not her missing sister. There’s a particularly deft scene where they’re stopped in a parking lot by Homeland Security and the officer asks them to prove their U.S. citizenship. I won’t divulge how it plays out but there’s so much going on in this moment and it’s a very effective way to make several points at once about the biases and bigotries and twisted priorities of law enforcement.

The film is also more confirmation that Gladstone is a bonafide movie star. Oscar-nominated for her role in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” she makes nuanced choices and is the kind of actor who holds the screen with a wonderful charisma. “They are both sisters mourning their missing sister,” she told IndieWire when asked about her role in both films. “Same land, a hundred years later. They are very different women in very different points in history, but it’s a continuation of the same old story.”

Gladstone, Deroy-Olson and Temblay have found a way to breathe real life into that story.

“Fancy Dance” — 3 stars  (out of 4)

Where to watch: Apple TV+

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.