SHALL WE DANCE?
A Film Review by Brian Takeshita
Rating: ***1/2 out of ****
The opening narration of SHALL WE DANCE? informs us that Japan is a nation of people who shy away from public or sometimes even private displays of emotion. Holding hands or saying "I love you" is a blatant and shameful deed. It is therefore that dancing, a pastime of holding hands, touching, and bodily expression is looked down upon with disdain. A regular man in the professional world should have no such desires.
So it is for Mr. Sugiyama. He is an accountant in his forties, married, and a father. What possible role could dance have in his life? However, one day, while traveling home on the train, he happens to notice a beautiful woman gazing from the window of a dance studio. He is captivated by her. Over the next few days he sees her repeatedly at the same time, gazing outward. One evening, he works up the courage to enter the studio and meet her. Instead of finding the woman of his dreams, he finds a wonderful new world, the world of dance.
When I approach foreign films, I never quite know what to expect. I suppose the stigma is that they are deep or aloof, and you may not be able to understand it all. Even though I've seen my share of foreign films, and know that this is not always the case, I was still stuck with this preconception going into SHALL WE DANCE?. Having seen PILLOW BOOK a few weeks previously probably didn't help. However, much like Mr. Sugiyama, what I found was something I didn't anticipate.
SHALL WE DANCE? is one of the funniest movies I have seen in quite some time. Not a lot of the humor is intelligent, and much of it is sheer physical comedy, but you quickly realize that as a viewer, you must give yourself to the feeling of the movie and not spend too much time analyzing it - much like dancing. Koji Yakusho, as Mr. Sugiyama, plays the straight man in this movie, but just watching his mannerisms and awkwardness in the dance studio is more than mildly amusing. His sincerity through otherwise strange situations reminded me a lot of Jimmy Stewart's earlier performances. More outrageous are the characters Mr. Sugiyama meets in his dance class: A pair of mismatched dance beginners and an office worker with the alter ego as the king of the Latin dance.
Although the plot of SHALL WE DANCE? follows a general formula from beginning to its inevitable ending, the plot does take a few twists along the way. For example, Mr. Sugiyama's wife, unaware of her husband's dance lessons, hires a private investigator to find out what he's been doing with his Wednesday nights. Rather than taking the wrong-conclusion-then-have-a-zany-confrontation route, this thread went in a surprising and decidedly more enjoyable direction.
Director Masayuki Suo presents the viewer with some excellent imagery, especially during musical interludes which feature classical, jazz, Latin, and pop music. One problem, however, is that at times too many things are happening on the screen at once. In long shots of the dance floor, I sometimes noticed several hilarious actions happening at the same time, but was not able to draw all of them in. Actually, I'm not sure I could label it a total drawback, as trying to see it all was a little fun.
At a hair under two hours, the film is well paced enough that the time seems to fly. Although the film finishes with a satisfactory finale, I had so thoroughly enjoyed the ride that I was sorry to see it end.
Review posted September 26, 1997
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