Romancefest 3: Sadiefest - Shall We Dance?

Next, we travel to Japan for SHALL WE DANCE?, a sweet romantic comedy about the unique power of dance to lift the weight of inhibition from a repressed soul. At least, I assume dance has that power. You won't catch me dancing. Unless C&C Music Factory comes on when I'm shopping at the QFC. Then I suddenly become the Fred Astaire of the baking aisle.

SHALL WE DANCE? is the story of an accountant (Koji Yakusho) who has acquired a wife, a daughter, and the house of his dreams, and now feels bored and empty and unable to enjoy these things. The only glimmer of light in his life is his glimpses of a beautiful woman gazing out the window of a dance school visible from his commuter train. One day, Yakusho finally steps off the train and into the dance school, and begins taking ballroom dancing lessons in secret. His teacher (Reiko Kusamura) is wise and kind, but as he learns, he keeps one eye on the beautiful woman in the window who turns out to be another teacher at the school -- an ex-professional ballroom dancer (Tamiyo Kusakari).

The poignancy of this story comes from the reserved nature of the Japanese culture. I'm no expert, but as the film explains it, married couples in Japan rarely display affection in public, let alone dance, so a serious family man taking dance classes is an embarrassing scandal to be viewed with suspicion. Against this backdrop, it is very touching to see the way Yakusho begins to open up as he becomes more and more comfortable with his instructors and his fellow students, including a co-worker by day who is a flamboyant sex God on the dance floor by night (Naoto Takenaka).

As the plot develops, a competition inevitably becomes involved, and Yakusho is eventually in training to partner up with another instructor at the school (Eriko Watanabe), a proud and stubborn outspoken woman. Still, all the while, his eyes are on the alluring and mysterious woman in the window, Kusakari.

But this is all just fluff -- the real meat of the film is in the relationships between the characters, all shy in their own ways and all waiting for the right opportunity to bloom. It's always nice in movies when people really help each other, even if it's in small ways, and that's what this movie is about -- getting outside oneself, becoming involved with other people, and finding help in friendship.

Yakusho is an easy protagonist for me to relate to. Although the film explains his reservations as being uniquely Japanese, I find that I have many of the same problems, and often resort to gazing dreamily out of windows in search of answers.