Connie's Web Movies

	Connie's Web
	Movies


	Favorite Movies, Actors & TV Shows (more to be added)
Begin the Beguine	Luck of the Irish 1949 Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter & Leprechaun
by Melora Hardin	Shining Through 1992 M Griffith, L Neeson, M Douglas
at the South Seas Club	My Man Godfrey 1936 William Powell, Carole Lombard, Gail Patrick
in The Rocketeer 1991	The Enemy Below 1957 Robert Mitchum, Curt Jurgens
	Seabiscuit 2003
	Shall We Dance 2004 American Version
	Shall We Dance 1996 Japanese Version
	Christmas in Connecticut 1945 Dennis Morgan, Barbara Stanwyck

	Kelly Rutherford in HomeFront 91-93
	Ray Milland
	John Mahoney in Frasier (with Eddie) and in Moon Struck, 1987

Shall We Dance? Music by Richard Rodgers and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

What do you get when you cross Strictly Ballroom with an old-fashioned American romantic comedy? A Japanese classic! 1996


		Shall We Dance? from writer/director Masayuki Suo is a triumph. This is a movie that Hollywood should be ashamed that it didn't make. It is essentially an exploration of the adventures (such as they are) of middle-aged Japanese "salary-man" Shohei Sugiyama (Koji Yakusho, from Kurusawa's Ran and Juzo Itami's Tampopo), who suddenly decides to step out of the middle-class rat race in which he is trapped. Mr. Sugiyama is riding the train home from a night "on the town" with co-workers (he leaves them at 9:00, which gives you an idea of the sort of man he is), when he looks up and sees the beautiful Mai Kishikawa (director Suo's real-life wife, Tamiyo Kusakari) gazing out the window of a dance studio near a station where his train stops every night.


Mr. Sugiyama, happily married to a loyal and loving wife (Hideko Hara), with a bright daughter (Misa Shimizu), a car, and a nice suburban house with a garden, becomes obsessed with the woman and decides that he must take up ballroom dancing. This doesn't seem like much to an American audience, but in a society in which husbands and wives do not even kiss in public, the idea of a married man dancing in public with another woman is utterly scandalous. Despite this, a very sheepish and awkward Mr. Sugiyama takes up ballroom dancing at the Kishikawa Studio, only to discover that his instructor is not the beautiful Mai, but a much older woman (Eriko Watanabe), much to his dismay.


		The unfortunate Mr. Sugiyama doesn't even get private lessons. He is enrolled in a beginning dance class with two other men, the ingratiating Mr. Hattori, played to the hilt by Yu Tokui, and Mr. Tanaka, played by Hiromasa Taguchi, who has taken up dancing as "exercise." Worse, the clumsy newcomers are constantly put to shame by the wild dancing of a client who wants to emulate world Latin dance champion, Donny Burns, and by his haughty sometime-partner, hard-driving dance instructor Tamako Tamura (Reiko Kusamura).



In spite of marital stress caused by his weekly dancing (on Wednesday nights his shirts come home smelling of one woman's perfume, on weekends they smell of several different perfumes), in spite of bizarre encounters at the office with his creepy co-worker Mr. Aoki (Naoto Takenaka, doing some brilliant acting), and in spite of being tailed by private detective Toru Miwa (a constantly-amusing Akira Emoto), Mr. Sugiyama persists in dancing at the school and at clubs, where he first begins to learn of "the fiercely competitive world of ballroom dancing," to coin a phrase. He discovers that Mai is not simply a dance instructor and the daughter of the school's owner, she was once a semi-finalist at the world ballroom dancing championships in Blackpool, England, and that he now has a rival for Mai -- Japanese dance champion Hiromasa Kimoto (Masahiro Motoki), who "can make your backbone melt," and who wants Mai to be his dance partner. (Kusakari is herself a ballerina in real life, by the way, so her dancing is superbly formal.) He also learns of the sheer joy of dancing from his own instructor, who tells him how her life was transformed by having seen and heard the title number, "Shall We Dance," in The King and I.


	Unfortunately for Sugiyama, Miwa (and Mrs. Sugiyama) catch up with him just as he is about to do what, in an American film, would be the climax and finale -- he is finally coaxed into entering a dancing competition. But, despite the very American look and feel given to the film by Suo and cinematographer Naoki Kayano, this is after all, a modern Japanese movie, and a pat ending with Sugiyama winning and then falling into the arms of his forgiving and loving wife would be just too simplistic. Fortunately for us!




	His marriage suddenly shaken by the revelation of his dancing, Mr. Sugiyama resolutely abandons dancing and throws himself into his work and returns to the grinding drudgery of his routine life. Despite the efforts of his co-worker Mr. Aoki, fellow-student Mr. Hattori, instructor Tamako (and eventually, even his own wife) to get him to dance again, Sugiyama becomes "a couch potato." This continues until he learns of a party being held for Mai. Will he attend or won't he? This is the question whose resolution Suo has left for the film's climax. Will he maintain his determination to stay away from the beautiful Mai or will he go to her?





	`Question for Masayuki Suo, The Director of "Shall We Dance?"` Why does your film begin with a water drop? Masayuki Suo: First of all, the keyword of the movie is Blackpool [where the ballroom dancing championships are held]. And the water was a black pool. The first drop into the black pool was a tear drop of the leading actress. And the one footstep into the water puddle, that's the foot of Mr. Sugiyama, the hero. Sugiyama steps into the world where the heroine sheds tears.

Last Update 10-12-7