In Japan, the spoken prologue briefly fills us in, "ballroom dancing is regarded with much suspicion." So it would abundantly appear. A white-collar drudge on his nightly train commute has a clear view, from one of the stops on his way to the suburbs, of the lighted window of an elevated dance studio. Framed in the window, like a department-store mannequin, stands a willowy young woman with a far-away gaze, a silent siren of such allure as to propel the mechanical man to stumble out of his rut, to step impulsively onto the station platform with his compact briefcase, to cross over into an alien, an alternative universe, and to enroll in a beginners' class of three. He will fail to mention his little deviation to his wife on his arrival home. And before long a pulsing Latin rhythm will wash over the arid accountancy office, borne there in the breast of the daydreaming slave, and he will discreetly practice his dance steps -- one, two, three, four -- under his desk or at his seat on the commuter train. But the woman in the window, one of the instructors at the studio, will remain spectrally aloof and unapproachable ("It's a classroom, not a disco"), a woman of mystery, a woman with a past. The vision of writer-director Masayuki Suo is no less profound than it is sweet, and not by any means limited to national boundaries. It encompasses the durable human themes of repression and inhibition, the fetters of shame and embarrassment, the inner capacity for transformation and escape, the titillating thrill of the Secret Life. The sweetness comes from the wholesome particulars of the case. This man's guilty little secret is not some back-street affair, not some addiction to strip clubs or gay bars. And yet the wife, when she finally finds out, makes a legitimate point: "Even if it was dancing, it was still an affair." Comparisons with the traumatically unforgettable Strictly Ballroom seem impossible to avoid, and for that matter there's no reason they should not be welcomed and encouraged. Where the Australian film offered a modern-dress fairy tale -- Cinderella, the Ugly Duckling, whatever you please -- the Japanese film doubles the pot, with two different and intertwined tales, a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk allegory of growth and attainment, and at the same time a rescue of Rapunzel from her prison tower, a reawakening of Sleeping Beauty. And, more importantly, where the Australian film offered only crassness and vulgarity, the Japanese substitutes taste and refinement. Koji Yakusho, Tamiyo Kusakari. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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