Shall we dansu review?

[Mark Schilling]

Re Janine Hansen's query, here's my own review of SWD, which ran in the
Japan Times back in February 1996 -- long before any of the American
reviews appeared. You read it here first!

Regards,
Mark Schilling (schill at gol.com)

Re: Shall We Dance?

      There are plenty of under-40 Japanese directors who want to make art
films that display the daring and subtlety of their cinematic technique,
the depth and complexity of their artistic vision -- and some actually
succeed. But there are few who want to entertain the way a Spielberg can
entertain, with images that give new life to the near-comatose critical
verbs "thrill" and "delight." 
     There is, of course, the matter of money; Japanese filmmakers do not
have "Jurrasic Park" budgets to work with. But as Masayuki Suo has
demonstrated in films like the 1989 "Fanshii Dansu" (Fancy Dance), the 1992
"Shiko Funjatta" (Sumo Do, Sumo Don't) and the currently playing "Shall We
Dance?," money isn't everything -- attitude and artistry are equally, if
not more, important.          
      It's not that Suo, who made his feature debut in a 1984 pinku (soft
porn) film titled "Hentai Kazoku: Aniki no Yome-san" (Pervert Family: Older
Brother's Bride), is trying to remake "E.T." with the Hollywood equivalent
of car fare; he is more interested in exploring odd cultural pockets than
filming sci-fi fantasies. Also, Instead of pounding the audience in
submission with wham-bam effects and hyperactive story lines, a la "Indiana
Jones," Suo prefers a more human scale and laid-back pace. 
     But he has a Spielbergian way of injecting his feel-good stories of
spiritual discovery and worldly triumph with an unabashed romanticism that
is at times affectingly sweet, at times cloyingly sentimental. And Suo
surpasses the director of "1941" in his talent for filming even hackneyed
material, including the grossest slapstick, with fresh touches and spot-on
timing that brings it to hilarious life. Perhaps the more apt point of
cross-cultural comparison is Harpo Marx. 
        The critical bottom line is that both directors have given us
cinematic moments that are an uncomplicated pleasure to be in and leave us
glowing as we walk out of the theater. What is wrong with that?
     In "Shall We Dance?" Suo's odd cultural pocket of choice is not a
Buddhist temple ("Fancy Dance") or college sumo club ("Shiko Funjatta") but
a dance studio that looks like an architectural leftover from the early
1960s, hidden away on a Tokyo back street. But to a middle-aged salaryman
named Sugiyama (Yakusho Koji), who glimpses the school's dancers through
the window every night as he commutes home on the train, it exerts a
strange attraction. There is a girl in that window -- tall, proud and
effortlessly graceful -- who is a vision of loveliness in the urban jungle,
an embodiment of the possibilities that Sugiyama is letting slip away in
his humdrum work-a-day existence. He wants to dance with that girl. 
       The straightest of straight arrows, who makes a beeline from the
office to his suburban home day after day, until his wife urges him to have
a bit of after-hours fun to break the routine, Sugiyama does not have
dalliance in mind. But he can't get the girl out of his head. One night he
finds himself inside the studio, signing up for lessons in the waltz, the
rumba and the cha-cha-cha. 
      The world of ballroom dancing has been the subject of films before,
including Baz Luhrmann's 1992 sleeper hit "Strictly Ballroom," but Suo is
the only Japanese director I know to explore it in a full-length feature. 
As he shows us with his usual acuteness, in Japan ballroom dancing occupies
an uneasy place on the social spectrum between a legitimate cultural
pursuit, with associations, contests, ranks and all the rest of it, and an
outre hobby of the weird, the lonely and the lecherous. There are several
examples of the latter types in the studio and Sugiyama beginner's dance
class and Sumo uses them to good comic effect, including funny sequences of
Sugiyama and his odd-squad classmates botching the basic steps. 
      The weirdest -- and funniest -- is Aoki (Naoto Takenaka), a colleague
of Sugiyama's who is a dweebish incompetent in the office, but morphs into
a bewigged Latin fireball on the dance floor. A Suo regular, who played the
hapless sumo club captain in "Shiko Funjatta," Takenaka goes amusingly over
the top, while not letting his clowning overwhelm his lonely-guy character.
      The heart of the film, however, is Sugiyama's reawakening to life
beyond the desk, the train and the home PC. A tall, rugged hunk of an actor
who made his name in TV jidai geki (period drama) roles, Yakusho Koji
portrays Sugiyama with a winning-if-bumbling sincerity that comes straight
from the Jimmy Stewart school of aw-shucks comic acting. But like the star
of "It's a Wonderful Life," Koji can also express the inner confusion of
his Mr. Nice Guy character as he struggles to realize his dream, while
wrestling his conscience.                                      
      The object of that dream, an instructor named, appropriately, Mai
("Dance"), is played with authority by newcomer Tamiyo Kusakari, a prima
ballerina with a slew of real-life awards. She is, as might be expected,
impeccable on the dance floor and demonstrates a steely will and cool
sensuality in her dramatic scenes. But Suo's camera is too much in love
with her statuesque beauty and his script lingers too long on her
professional crisis -- she fell during a major competition in England and
has since lost her desire to dance -- while failing to make her often-told
story either credible or compelling.
      For all that, in his big scenes, most notably Sugiyama's first dance
contest, Suo dynamically conveys the visual glamour and physical energy of
his ballroom dancing world, while deft portraying its human undercurrents
of desire, jealousy, ambition and pride. As a comic filmmaker, he gets the
requisite laughs from his world's cheesy, tacky side, but he is at heart a
sympathizer, not a caricaturist. By the end we understand Sugiyama's
fascination and even Aoki's obsession. Dance, anyone?