Immerse yourself in a proudly old-fashioned weepie

The Road Dance (M, 116 mins) Directed by Richie Adams Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★

We are in the wildly beautiful Outer Hebrides islands, off the coast of Scotland. The year is 1916.

In a tiny settlement of stone crofts, potato beds and not much else, Kirsty Macleod is clearly the village beauty and the girl all the young men would like to have on their arms at the dance that is to be held this very night. The dance is to farewell the men of the village – teenage boys, all of them – who are going off to fight in France against the Germans.

Included among the called-up is poetic and sensitive Murdo, who is – this is fiction, remember – the one Kirsty has fallen for.

If that setting isn’t foreboding enough already, the trailer to The Road Dance will also have told you that Kirsty is knocked unconscious and assaulted, some time in the hours after the party.

The Road Dance is based on the hugely popular novel by John

McKay. And it reaches our screens having already picked up the audience award at the Edinburgh Film Festival, among others.

The Road Dance is a sweeping epic of a type we don’t see much of any more.

Despite the isolated and confined setting of the island – although we do travel to France with Murdo at times – this is still a film that absolutely fills the screen with startling land and seascapes at the merest provocation.

The Hebrides are outcrops of granite, lashed by storms and bathed in sunlight from one day to the next, and cinematographer Petra Korner lets her camera drink in every moment of it.

In a cinema you won’t see many more beautiful films than The Road Dance in this – or any – year.

As Kirsty, Hermione Corfield (Rust Creek) turns in what might be her last role before she becomes famous.

Opposite Corfield, Will Fletcher (The Rings of Power) is also excellent as Murdo. Veteran Mark Gatiss dials in some lovely support work as the village doctor who must treat Kirsty.

The Road Dance is contrived at times, but it is also an honest and sensitive film. Writer and director Richie Adams (Of Mind and Music) is nimble and insightful around the troubling storyline and allows his characters to be people, not just devices to drive the plot, more often than not.

If you’re in the mood for a proudly old-fashioned weepie with its heart in the right place, stuffed with the most stunning scenery the British Isles have to offer, then this is your film. Recommended.