After he finished his critically acclaimed road movies Roadkill, and Highway 61 (a trilogy that would later be completed with Hardcore Logo) director Bruce McDonald decided to focus on something a little less travel oriented and a little more community oriented. The result was 1995's Dance Me Outside, a movie that's part comedy, part drama, part revenge thriller and part political statement.

The film takes place on a reservation in a remote area of Northern Ontario. Two friends, Silus Crow (Ryan Black) and Frank Fencepost (Adam Beach), meet up with Gooch (Michael Greyeyes), a pal who has just been released from the prison where he's just spent the last three years of his life and who is keen on reuniting with his old flame Ilianna (Lisa LaCroix), who just so happens to be Silus' older sister. Unfortunately for Gooch, Ilianna has moved on and is now married to a Caucasian lawyer from Toronto named Robert McVey (Kevin Hicks).

While everyone is hanging at the Blue Quills bar one night, one of the young ladies from the reservation, Little Margaret (Tamara Podenski), dances with a thug named Clarence Gaskill (Hugh Dillon). Clarence hangs around the reservation a lot but doesn't seem to want anything from the natives save for cheap beer and the occasional lay but with that said, the entire community is shocked when they find out he's killed the poor girl. Things are made worse when he's not charged with murder, but with manslaughter. A few years later, Clarence is released from prison and Silus, Frank, Gooch and Little Margaret's former flame, Robert Coyote (Selim Running Bear Sandoval), decide to take an eye for an eye and murder Clarence for what he did. While all of this is going on, Frank and Silus are trying to figure out what to do about their girlfriends, Sadie (Jennifer Podemski) and Poppy (Sandrine Holt) and Ilianna is trying to figure out how her husband, who suffers from a low sperm count, is going to give her the babies her mother so desperately wants them to have.

Dance Me Outside is an excellent blend of quirky humor, genuine drama and interesting characters and as such, it's a really enjoyable film. The ending comes at you a little fast and feels a little rushed but the writing team of Bruce McDonald, Don McKeller and John Frizzell (working off of the novel from W.P. Kinsella) have crafted a story that is not only heartfelt but also very believable. McDonald's picture does an excellent job of capturing the spirit of community on the reservation while at the same time exploring the alienation felt by an outsider (in this case a white man in the form of McVey) when introduced to this tight-knit group. Neither side understands one another and the actions of Clarence make the natives completely justified in their mistrust of people from outside their circle, but both sides prove themselves more humane than either realized by the time the picture ends.

Shot on location and using a lot of the locals in the cast, Dance Me Outside also features some beautiful cinematography (look at that shot where Frank and Silas sit beside the lake to reflect) and a great soundtrack (look for contributions from The Ramones, The Leslie Spit Trio, and not surprisingly High Dillan's The Headstones), both of which compliment the film quite effectively. While in the end, Dance Me Outside may not be as eccentric or off the wall as the three films that McDonald had made prior, but it represents a lot of growth in terms of storytelling and character development.

Video:

Dance Me Outside has been transferred to DVD in an anamorphic 1.85.1 aspect ratio that preserves the film's theatrical presentation. Detail is usually strong though some of the darker scenes are a little bit murky. There aren't any problems with mpeg compression artifacts to complain about nor is there any heavy edge enhancement. Some minor print damage shows up in the form of the odd speck here and there but overall this is a decent transfer even if there is some odd (albeit minor) trailing during a couple of scenes.