Shall we dance?

A middle-aged accountant in an established, successful Japanese firm has a house, a wife, and a beautiful daughter. He works hard all day, comes home, goes to sleep, and then does the whole thing over again. He's a man who's lost his soul. He's an automaton, a cog in the larger Japanese industrial society. As old Karl Marx would have put it, he's alienated from the larger society of his fellow workers, his family, and from himself. What a predicament.

On the way home from work, he spots a beautiful but melancholy woman looking out the window of a dance studio. Every night, she's there, calling to him like a siren or one of the fabled wood nymphs. There's a sexual attraction that fuels his interest. But there's also much more: he immediately identifies with her, feels an instant sense of connection, because she is outwardly expressing his inner angst. So he takes the leap, overcomes his fear, and signs up for dance lessons.

In the West, this commonplace occurrence would go unnoticed: we would say that Mr. Sugiyama is having a `mid-life crisis.' We would expect him to have an affair with his secretary, or suddenly buy leathers and a Harley and hit the road. But in Japan, where Ballroom dancing is viewed as lascivious, perhaps even perverted behavior, this makes for a much more interesting dilemma. The main character, Mr. Sugiyama, a respectable accountant, is drawn into dance by the alluring siren. He acts on his impulse to get to know her. But then, when reality sets in that he will never win her affection, he falls in love with dance. It becomes his personal means both of self-discovery, and self-expression. It's a fascinating transformation.

One of the reasons that this movie works so well is its rich and varied set of characters, all of which are simply adorable. This is an incredibly impressive Japanese film. It's a must-see video.

Subtitles should not deter you from this charmer of a film. Ballroom Dancing, which is seen as risque in Japan, becomes the unlikely passion of an accountant who has gotten everything he thought he wanted and found he missed out on happiness. He begins classes hoping to meet a girl he saw looking as sad as he was himself, but finds that dance has charms of its own. Like Babette's Feast, the insight into another culture, and the elegant structure of the film leave you more than satisfied.

This film is about a man who has been too caught up with the accepted convention of success, trying to be ever upwardly mobile, working hard so that he could be proud of owning his own home. He assumes this is all there is to life until he accidentally takes up dancing, all because he wanted to get a closer look of a beautiful girl that he sees by the dance studio everyday while riding the subway on his way home.

His was infatuated with her at first, going to the dance class just to idolize her, but he eventually lets himself go and gets himself into the dancing. It eventually becomes apparent to him that there is more to life than working yourself to death. There is a set of oddball characters also learning in the studio, giving the film a lot of laughs and some sense of bonding between the dejected.

There is also revelations of various characters, including the girl he initially admired, giving some depth to them by showing their blemished past and their struggle to overcome it.

The dancing was also engaging, with the big competition at the end, but it is not the usual story where our underdog come out at the top by winning it. Instead, there are downfalls, revelations and redemption.

All these makes it a moving and fun film to watch.

This movie opened in Korea four years later than in Japan due to the now-defunct ban on Japanese pop culture in Korea. But the audiences in Korea were just as enthralled and enchanted by the story as the rest of the world was.

Like Japan, there are many salarymen in Korea who are also facing a mid-life crisis. After the movie premiered in Seoul, dance studios were reporting up to a 50-percent increase in the number of new students.

I took two years of jazz dance during college, and have seen Strictly Ballroom and Dance With Me. But this movie was the driving force behind me finally signing up for ballroom dance (called dancesport in Korea) lessons.

Mr. Aoki was hilarious as the employee who led a double life unbeknownst to his colleagues. It was also interesting to find out the reasons why the other students took lessons.

I too would have taken classes just to get close to the sexy dance instructor alone.

This movie is a perfect ten in my book.

Okay. As you can see this is one of my favorite if not favorite films. This is a character drama which is absolutely hilarious. The main character is a business man who is stuck in a "same thing, different day" mentality. He sees a woman looking melancholy out a window of a dance studio from his train everyday and wonders about her and decides to find out more about her. He decides to join the dance class only to find out she is not the instructor. From there he bonds with four other dancers and learns to enjoy dancing as well as finding out about the mysterious woman.

There is no gratuitous (or any) sex involved, just how a small group of people learn how friendships are formed and developed.

This film was remade with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez and the new one while appealing is nowhere as enjoyable as the original. The movie never made it big in America because it was not eligible for the Oscars since it was broadcast on television in Japan (movies cannot be released on TV or they are disqualified for Oscar nominations). It did win numerous awards in Japan for best film, cast, director etc for their "Oscar" awards.