Photo © Highland Road Films
The Road Dance
The Road Dance
In the opening scene, a majestic Cunard liner passes The Road Dance’s Scottish island-setting bound for the New World. It’s 1904 and the great ship sets a child on the beach to dreaming of—as her father puts it—“a better life in America.” The film jumps to 1916, the child has grown but the New World daydream hasn’t left her imagination.
By this time Kirsty (Hermione Corfield) has grown into an eligible teenage lass, courted by all the lads on the remote, sparsely populated island. She loves only one, Murdo (Will Fletcher), who shares her half-inchoate love of poetry, literature and dreams. Murdo keeps his copy of Dickens concealed within bible-black covers. Scripture is the only literature approved in a place enthralled to grim Calvinism. On Sundays, the preacher promises everlasting torment, not only in the next world but in this one for those obedient to “temptations of the flesh.”
Director Richie Adams (Of Mind and Music), cowriting with John MacKay, sets their story at the footpath pace of a community that has scarcely seen a horse, much less an automobile. The men pull fish from the sea in their nets, the women gather wool and pick potatoes from the unpromising ground. The personalities of the main characters are sharply, succinctly defined, as are their folkways. And then, when Great Britain imposes universal conscription to shore up its sagging war effort against Germany, the lads are torn away from their island to face whistling bullets and scattering shrapnel on the Western Front.
The Road Dance’s Celtic charm is shattered abruptly when, on a dark homeward pathway, Kirsty is assaulted, pushed face to the ground and raped—just before the lads ship off to war. The camera doesn’t show the attacker, it’s unclear whether Kirsty saw his face and even if she suspects, with whom can she confide?
Afterward, The Road Dance twitches on the thread of expectation. Was Kirsty impregnated by her rapist? Will Murdo survive the war? Will the island’s women come together to help Kirsty—and will she make it to America? The film benefits from fine acting throughout and the cinematography of Petra Korner, who makes full use of the island’s rocky fingers of land extended into the rough, surrounding sea.
The Road Dance opens in select theaters and digitally on Friday, Oct. 13.
