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THE ROAD DANCE
Director: Richie Adams Cast: Hermione Corfield, Will Fletcher, Morven Christie, Ali Fumiko Whitney, Mark Gatiss, Alison Peebles, Tom Byrne, Scott Miller, Luke Nunn, Sean Gilder, Liam Brennan, Leigh Biagi, Jeff Stewart MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:56 Release Date: 10/13/23 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 12, 2023 An old-fashioned melodrama, The Road Dance isn't quite up to the task of tackling the severity of the traumatic event at its core. Writer/director Richie Adams movie is undeniably beautiful, thanks to its setting, and achingly sincere, thanks to some solid performances, but it is a story that seems more concerned with piling up complications upon and obstacles in front of its main character, instead of dealing directly with the horror of what happens to her and the complexity of what that means. She's Kirsty Macleod (Hermione Corfield), who lives in an isolated village on the remote Outer Hebrides off Scotland. Raised by widowed mother Mairi (Morven Christie) and living with younger sister Annie (Ali Fumiko Whitney), Kirsty is carrying on a secret but chaste romance with Murdo (Will Fletcher). It's 1916, though, and with Great Britain enacting universal conscription for the world war, Murdo and the village's other young men will be sent to combat on the front lines. To send them off, the village holds a dance, and as Kirsty walks home in the middle of it, she is violently attacked and raped by an unknown assailant. Initially unaware of what has happened as the result of a head injury, Kirsty keeps the sexual assault a secret—as well as the fact that she's pregnant. Much of this story, adapted from John MacKay's novel, revolves around the insular, gossipy, and seemingly judgmental nature of a small locale such as this one. Everyone knows everyone else's business or is trying to uncover it, and the tension here is in Kirsty trying to keep her pregnancy hidden from her mother, sister, and nosy locals like Old Peggy (Alison Peebles). Meanwhile, the young woman worries about Murdo, who doesn't know what happened just before shipping off to war and is in mounting peril on the Western Front. The approach here is to tap into the basic emotions of this tale, and to his credit, Adams does so with some skill, simply by trusting his actors and letting the cloudy, mournful beauty of the Scottish isle backdrop envelop the mood of the story. The early sections, of youthful love and the encroaching dread of the war, are particularly strong, and the atmosphere of religious dogmatism and neighborly curiosity does highlight Kirsty's nightmarish existence of pain and anxiety. There is, of course, much more to this situation and character, though, and the melodramatic approach does a disservice to both. It's more than just the broad mood of The Road Dance that diminishes this story's potential. It's the plot itself, which becomes increasingly hectic and filled with high-stakes scenarios that Kirsty needs to navigate to protect her reputation and herself. The third act in particular revolves around a series of games of sorts—cat-and-mouse maneuvers, a battle of wits, a shell-swapping tactic. That process fully reveals that the movie cares more about its characters as pawns than as actual people. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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