Shall We Dance? (US Version) DVD Region 1

Middle-aged salaryman Shohei Sugiyama (Koji Yakusho) seems to have the ideal traditional Japanese life. He has a stable career as a senior accountant, a brand new detached residence out in the suburbs of Tokyo, an attractive dutiful wife named Masako (Hideko Hara), and an intelligent well-behaved daughter, Chikage (Ayano Nakamura); yet this doesn't stop him suffering from a mid-life crisis. Each morning he wakes at 5.30am - too early to have breakfast with the family - then bikes and catches the train to work, comes home, has a bath and goes to bed again without interacting much with his family at all.

The one bright spark in his otherwise dreary routine are the brief glimpses of an attractive ballroom dance instructor he catches on his daily train ride to and from work. One day he plucks up the courage to go to her dance academy under the pretence of taking private lessons with her, but when he finds out how much this would cost, he has to make do with the group beginner's class run by a friendly elderly instructor named Tamako (Reiko Kusamura). He is joined in the group by Tanaka (Hiromasa Taguchi), an overweight man taking lessons on the advice of his doctor, and Hattori (Yu Tokui), who is taking dancing lessons on the side in order to surprise his dancer wife. They are also occasionally partnered with more experienced dancers Toyoko (Eriko Watanabe), an acerbic housewife who was once an aspiring dancer, and Aoki (Naoto Takenaka), Sugiyama's co-worker who's become a Latin dance maestro to attract younger women.

Although Sugiyama's motives for entering the lessons are to get closer to the beautiful, aloof dance instructor Mai Kishikawa (Tamiyo Kusakari), he starts to find that ballroom dancing is beginning to fill the void in his life, and Sugiyama starts to come out of his introverted shell little by little. Meanwhile Mai has also been wrestling with a crisis of her own; having recently dropped out of the professional circuit after her dance partner dumped her. Since then she has been wallowing away in self pity at her father's dance school and secretly looking down on the amateurs that frequent the place, but watching Sugiyama and his friends putting in so much effort to learn the simple routines and become good enough to compete in amateur competitions, Mai starts to come out of her shell just as Sugiyama does.

Masayuki Suo may be covering familiar ground with the themes of Shall We Dance?, exploring aimless individuals who find purpose and inspiration through a common discipline, but there's no denying that this is his strongest film to date. The reason for this is pretty much down to the deep characterisation and interaction between the various characters. Shall We Dance? has a reasonably large cast, and it's a testament to Suo's screenplay that everyone has a thoroughly rewarding character arc and play important roles in the arcs of others. Also, the gradual development of the lead character Sugiyama is much more nuanced and satisfactory than in Suo's previous films. This pretty much makes Shall We Dance? a very uplifting and rewarding drama, even if it doesn't have the witty comical social observations to enlighten the proceedings. The art of dance also provides plenty of scope for physical comedy, which is something that Suo and the ensemble cast tap into to great effect, in particular Naoto Takenaka as the weedy middle-aged wannabe love god Aoki. Naoto steals just about every scene he's in, using his small, lithe physicality to come up with a truly eccentric performance. Just one look of him sashaying through the offices at work is enough to crack anyone up, but when he hits the dance floor you're guaranteed to be laughing and cringing at the same time. Hiromasa Taguchi too captures similar comical sentiments as the ordinarily shy Tanaka who bursts into animated exuberance when dancing.

Koji Yakusho and Tamiyo Kusakari also excel in the lead roles of Sugiyama and Mai with Koji providing the standout performance of the film, taking a character who on the surface at least may appear a little cold and selfish (he does take up dancing with the desire to start up an extra-marital relationship afterall) and giving him an inherent warmth and shyness that makes Sugiyama very sympathetic. As Mai, Tamiyo is straddled with a rather unsympathetic character at the start of the film when Mai holds an aloof arrogant contempt for the amateur dancers she teaches, but Tamiyo manages to inject a lot of naivety into the role to temper the cynicism that threatens to consume Mai's dancing career. Tamiyo's a pretty famous ballerina in Japan, but to this day Shall We Dance? is the only film she's appeared in.

At 136 minutes, Shall We Dance? is a pretty long film, but by the end you'll be wishing it was 30 minutes or even and hour longer; the time flies by. It's an utterly entrancing and heart warming comedy drama and certainly one of the most iconic Japanese films of the late 90s. Over the years it has spawned many imitators, but sometimes you just can't beat the original.

Video
IVL previously released this 2-disc DVD of Shall We Dance? separately before the Kadokawa Classics range had begun, and boy does it show in the transfer! Presented anamorphically at 1.87:1 and with most of the DVD-9 disc devoted to the transfer, Shall We Dance? has far higher picture quality than the other Suo titles released by Kadokawa. What's more, it's fully progressive to boot! The image is detailed and the print is very clean, with only the occasional nick and scratch popping up. Contrast/brightness levels are excellent and shadow detail high. The image also has a vibrant, clean colour scheme with very natural skintones. It's worth noting that the scenes in the dance class are shot with very warm lighting, which results in a pinkified image and salmon skin tones, but the colour scheme remains vivid and clean, with no bleed. The only negative artefact that this has in common with the other transfers is the Edge Enhancement, which is all too frequent and noticeable. Still, this is a very nice transfer.

Audio
Shall We Dance? is presented with a Japanese DD2.0 soundtrack, and as with the previous titles the audio remains mostly centred, but unlike the other titles, the stereo speakers open up delicately during the musical interludes. The bass on this title is also much tighter, and while it may seem a little weak in comparison to a typical DD5.1 track, the bass manages to remain strong when needed without overwhelming the dynamics of the soundtrack. The track is also pleasantly clean, which means the dialogue remains crisp and clear without any tearing. In short, this is an excellent DD2.0 audio track.

Optional English and Chinese subtitles are provided. The English subtitles have no spelling or grammatical errors that I can recall.

Extras
With a second DVD dedicated entirely to the extras, it's pleasing to see IVL have slapped a good 1hr 43mins of material onto the disc. First up is the Interviews section, where you will find no less than five interviews and a lengthy video diary, here's a rundown of the lot:

Interview With Koji Yakusho (16m 21s): As the first interview on the disc it is therefore the one that establishes the main questions that each interviewee are also going to be asked. Koji is an affable, shy but charming man who answers each question asked with enthusiasm. From his mannerisms and comments you would never believe he's one of the biggest stars in Japan. Koji covers many aspects of the filming, from his casting and first impression of Masayuki Suo, to the extensive dancing practise he and his co-stars had to go through before the shoot started. It's a pretty informative interview.

Interview With Tamiyo Kusakari (21m 37s): The longest interview on the disc at over 21mins but Tamiyo is such an animated and jovial interviewee that it seems much shorter. Aside from providing her own observations on the film's shoot and her impressions of Masayuki Suo (who she subsequently fell in love with and married not long after working on the film), Tamiyo also discusses her reluctance to move away from Ballet for a while and take on a film project. She also provides some amusing anecdotes about clumsily staining the various costumes she was given to wear in certain scenes of the film.

Interview With Naoto Takenaka (12m 48s): Takenaka's on good form here taking the mickey out of his co-stars with some amusing and no doubt extremely exaggerated anecdotes about their behaviour. This interview is from the same session that his interviews on the previous film's DVDs were taken and Takenaka tends to focus more on what he and the cast got up to between shooting, but it's clear from this interview that he has great respect for Suo as a director and he provides some insight into Suo's directing process. His message to the director at the end is also hilarious.

Interview With Masayuki Suo (03m 20s): This interview is so short it essentially boils down to Suo talking us through the various dance scenes and why he approached them the way he did. It's short, but very informative.

Interview With Hiromasa Taguchi (13m 15s): The final interview on the disc and also one of the most informative, Taguchi talks us through his experiences in the practise sessions he, Koji, and Yu Tokui regularly attended. He also mentions how much grander this production seemed in comparison to the other two films he made with Suo. He's also the only interviewee to discuss the big success the film had in the US.

Also in the interviews section is the American Video Diary (31m 53s) which is a lengthy featurette about the director's tour across 19 major citites in the States to promote the film for Miramax before its general release in the US. Most of the footage is shot hand held by either Suo or his assistant Fumiko Futami and comes complete with on screen text explaining what's happening in each scene, but there are also regular interjections from a recording interview with the director (which explains why his earlier interview was so short). The 19 cities were split up into two tours: one that took place through April of 1997 and one that took place through May. For the first tour Suo is joined by his recently wed wife Tamiyo Kusakari and the two are clearing enjoying each other's company so much that most of the footage feels like it's from a newlywed couple's holiday journal. This is a fun featurette, mostly because Masayuki Suo's in great spirits throughout and is cleary revelling in interacting with the various foreign journalists and fans of his film. It's a shame that the footage is cut short once he reaches the Canadian stretch of the tour because he had his video camera nicked! At the end of this featurette is information on the film's box office takings in America and a list of all the awards it won at western film festivals.

The next extra feature is simply titled: Trailer (03.45) which is actually a montage of deleted scenes and outtakes set to music. This feature shows there must have been many more excellent scenes that didn't make it into the finished film. The final feature on the disc is a simple Artwork Gallery.

Optional English and Chinese subtitles are provided on all the extras. The English subtitles have no spelling or grammatical errors that I can recall.

by Matt Shingleton - DVD Times