The Road Dance

A Scottish bestseller is brought to the screen as a sweeping, old-fashioned melodrama set in the Outer Hebrides during the First World War.

The Road Dance takes place for the most part in 1916 and is set in the Outer Hebrides on the Isle of Lewis. Photographed in colour and widescreen by Petra Korner, the location yields striking pictures and for a certain audience this will undoubtedly be a film that will appeal. That was confirmed by it carrying off the Audience Award at the 2021 Edinburgh Film Festival, a success in line with the fact that John MacKay’s 2002 novel from which it was adapted had proved to be a best seller. The filmmaker is an American, Richie Adams, who wrote the screenplay himself and there is no reason to doubt his absolute commitment to the material which apparently had its origin in true events. I am unfamiliar with the novel, but it could well be that the film follows it closely. In any case what is on the screen suggests to me that responses will vary according to individual taste.

As a critic I have to say that The Road Dance emerges as a piece that might have worked better as a three-part television series despite the exterior scenes being so well suited to the big screen. I suggest that because the tale being told falls into three distinct sections and, with the tone in each one being different, it might gain from being seen in episodes. The first part of the film plays like a standard period romance in which a village girl, Kirsty (Hermione Corfield), falls in love with a young man, Murdo (newcomer Will Fletcher), only to find him being called up. Along with three other local youths he has to leave for military training which will quickly lead to service in France.

This opening section seems to set up The Road Dance as a predictable tale of love and war played out with dialogue that sometimes comes close to cliché. It also suggests a work incapable of surprising one, but then it unexpectedly takes on a darker hue for a midsection which, regardless of the period setting, may speak more strongly to a modern-day audience. Since this development is not foreshadowed, it seems appropriate not to describe here what it is that causes it. But I can say that the film’s final section becomes something else again, bringing in at least two major plot twists right out of the blue.

Hermione Corfield is well cast as Kirsty and there are also substantial supporting roles for Morven Christie, Mark Gatiss and Ali Fumiko Whitney, while the Scottish atmosphere reflected in the film's music score has its own attraction. Essentially, though, The Road Dance plays as a film for audiences ready to give themselves to a narrative which, in spite of its grimmer elements, comes across as offering less a sense of reality than a fiction which, because of the way in which it is written, lacks real depth and strains credibility. But I should still stress that for audiences who like works of this kind The Road Dance will be bound to deliver.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Hermione Corfield, Morven Christie, Mark Gatiss, Will Fletcher, Ali Fumiko Whitney, Sean Gilder, Tom Byrne, Luke Nunn, Scott Miller, Alison Peebles, Forbes Masson, Liam Brennan, Leigh Biagi.

Dir Richie Adams, Pro Maryilene Blondell, Jim Kreutzer and Steven Shapiro, Screenplay Richie Adams, from the novel by John MacKay, Ph Petra Korner, Art Dir Chris Stephenson, Ed Matt Mayer, Music Carlos José Alvarez, Costumes Gill Thorn.

Uinta Productions/Sheridan Road Productions/Wind Chill Media Group-Parkland Entertainment.
117 mins. UK. 2021. UK Rel: 20 May 20121 Cert. 15.