This Scottish period drama is “inspired” by true events and adapted from a novel by John MacKay, who says he based his book on something told to him as a boy: a story about a newborn baby found floating in the sea near his grandparents’ house in the Outer Hebrides. It struck me watching the film that it must really inspired by thousands of true events unrecorded by history: of women being raped and keeping silent out of fear – afraid of being blamed or not believed at all. Otherwise, it’s a heartfelt, nostalgic film with traditional, almost old-fashioned, storytelling, and acting that feels a bit stiff in places. Though there’s nothing inhibited about the wild beauty of the Hebridean landscape photographed by cinematographer Petra Korner.
It’s set in 1916 in a crofting community on Lewis, where village beauty Kirsty (Hermione Corfield) wants more from life than planting potatoes. She’s devoted to her mother and sister but dreams of emigrating to the United States with her poetry-reading love interest, Murdo (Will Fletcher). But first he must go to fight on the western front. It’s at a dance to wave off the village’s half-dozen or so men of fighting age – teenagers, really – that the rape happens. Afterwards, the local doctor (Mark Gatiss) treats Kirsty’s injuries with tact and delicacy – it seems like an act of kindness, but he makes the rape her secret. She tells no one.
What follows is the familiar story of pregnancy and denial. Kirsty hides her baby bump, but a godfearing local gossip catches a whiff of something not quite right. The lesson here is that Kirsty’s tiny village is both small-minded and big-hearted. Like I say, it’s sentimental, though the way Kirsty is helped by women boiling with fury at the injustice does feel modern.
• The Road Dance is released on 20 May in cinemas.
