What's On

Writer-director Richie Adams' new period drama The Road Dance is an adaptation of John McKay's 2003 novel of the same name, set in a small island community in the Outer Hebrides at the turn of the twentieth century.

Kirsty Mcleod (Hermione Corfield) is a young woman, coming of age in a small island community in the years before the First World War. She dreams of the wider world and a life away from the harsh land and strict religion of her island home. Tragedy strikes twice, once at a village party, and once again, when her boyfriend is sent to war.

Inspired by a true story, the film offers a believable window on the rhythms of life on the Hebridean island in the period. While the awe-inspiring but rugged beauty of the landscape makes a fitting backdrop to this coming-of-age story, it is the complexities of the small village community that the film captures most successfully. Like the book from which it was adapted, The Road Dance is never nostalgic or rose-tinted. It instead looks back, with honesty, at the lives our ancestors lived and is all the better for it.

Information published by Leisure and Culture Dundee.