Wolff rating: GOOD
Plot summary: Japanese salaryman takes up ``perverse'' Western ballroom dancing to cure his spreading malaise.
Biased, pithy comments: Beautiful, sweet, poigniant, and frilly, all the way through. Takusho and Kusakari have wonderfully expressive faces that show the strains of Japanese society even as they are always polite to one another. Japan fascinates me, as it is an industrialized, post-industrial nation like the U.S. with completely different mores and norms, and this movie explores them with tenderness. Quirky, but cute, it's not quite a romance and not quite a comedy. Lots of fun. This is a movie easy for foreigners despite being subtitled; it explains most of the Japanese customs that Western ballroom trounces on. ``Strictly Ballroom'' is probably where I'd start with ballroom movies, but this is also excellent.
Other Notes: In Japanese with subtitles.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Koji Takusho, Tamiy Kusakari, Naoto Takenaka, Eriko Watanabe.
Directed by: Masayuki Suo