This is really such a lovely film. I remember seeing it when it came out with my mom (must have been home for Christmas or something), and I just watched it again and loved it just as much. It just makes you feel good and makes you want to try out ball room dancing (and is going to make me at least do some more Dance Dance Revolution).

Review Contains Spoilers:

Yakusho Koji (He is such a good actor, and I loved his performance in THE EEL) plays Sugiyama Shohei a serious and tired accountant at a firm. His whole life is going to work, and coming right home to sleep, not even going out to drink. His wife worries about him not having any fun at all, until. On his way home from work watching out of the train window Shohei sees Kiskikawa Mai (Kusakari Tamiyo) staring sadly out of the window of a dance studio, and he is instantly smitten, and goes to take classes. He ends up in a beginner class, taught by a different teacher, and a bunch of strange dancers. There is Aoki Tomio (Takenaka Naoto) his coworker who loves Latin dance, and wears a wig to do his shtick. He is so affected by dance that he constantly walks around strangely like he is dancing at work, and isn’t even awar of it. There is the chubby woman Takahashi Toyoko (Watanabe Eriko) who is always searching for a partner and dances so much she collapses from all her work. And a chubby man who is doing it for health but quickly grows to love it, played by Taguchi Hiromasa. At first he is only their to win Mai, but eventually Sugiyama learns to love dance, and joins a dance competition partnering with Toyoko, but things go wrong when his daughter calls out and he screws up. His wife had thought he was having an affair and hired a detective, and had found out about his dancing. He had trained so hard with Toyoko and Mai teaching him, and really come alive, but when he quits he is dejected again. Until Mai sends him a letter telling him she is going away to enter competition again because he helped show her the joys of dancing and how to dance with a partner instead of with herself. He doesn’t want to go, but eventually does and shares her last dance.

A wonderful and heartwarming movie, with wonderful performances by a strange cast of characters. We learn right off that to dance like this is considered embarrassing in Japan, and to do it on the side even more so. This is really such a wonderful film. I can’t recommend it more. And it is so nice that it is finally on DVD, even though it took a US remake to get it released.