Sundance: Dale Dickey shines in 'A Love Song'
Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 11:00PM by Matt St Clair
If you don’t know her name, odds are you’ve probably still seen Dale Dickey pop up in shows and films you like including Best Picture nominee Winter’s Bone (2010). Even after earning slight awards traction for her role as the wife of a backwoods crime boss in the acclaimed indie, including an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female, Dickey has remained on the precipice of famed character actordom, not quite tipping over.
But with A Love Song, which just premiered at Sundance, Dickey finally gets a starring role to showcase her too often unsung gifts...
In A Love Song, Dickey plays Faye, a widow of seven years on a camping trip who reunites with Lito (Wes Studi), a childhood friend who’s also a widow. Through the minutiae of leisure activities, like a guitar session and them bonding while eating ice cream, their short time together becomes a moment of reconnection and rebuilding.
Though it's a simple story of grief and loss (running just 82 minutes) it’s made compelling thanks to the cinematography by Alfonso Herrera Salcedo that captures the picture’s lush landscape and of course, Dale Dickey’s central performance. Even without dialogue she can shift from showcasing painful longing to hopefulness in minutes. In an early scene, she makes the mundane of turning her radio on feel shattering; She wants to hear old music to keep the memory of her deceased love alive but the radio is like a relic of her broken past.
Without Dale Dickey’s performance, or her co-star Wes Studi who impresses in equal measure, A Love Song wouldn’t be as lyrical as it is. Although it plays a similar tune to other pictures that depict grief and loss, it still strikes moving chords. Mostly, though, we thank writer/director Max Walker-Silverman for giving two reliable supporting players a rare opportunity to claim center stage in his promising feature debut.
Reader Comments (3)
I heard this is a great film and I'm glad Dickey and Studi are given the chance to play leads.
An American actress with wrinkles. A true pioneer!
I always perk up whenever Dale Dickey appears onscreen. And I sit, nodding with satisfaction, during her scenes.
I hope she has many more lead roles, including romantic leads.