FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Shall We Dance (engl. subt.) 

One night - when he drives home late from work - he sees this beautiful woman alone at the window. She is completely lost in thought. The following night she stands there again. It is the window of a dance school, as the advertising sign indicates. On the third night he climbs the stairs to the dance studio. Thus begins Masayuki Suo's film about loneliness, attraction and secrets. Is this man really looking for a woman? Or does he rather care about the question why the stranger looks so lonely and sad out of the window? What might she be thinking right now? The man is called Shohei Sugiyama (Koji Yakusyo). He is a family man who works late into the night in his office. This man now decides to take dance lessons. Let us imagine that we are him! A Japanese employee. For him, the idea of taking ballroom dancing lessons must be synonymous with the temptation to court a mistress. I have always held the view that Japan is the most foreign country to us in the Asian world. Basically, the Japanese still live in a kind of Victorian society. Feelings of guilt and suppressed passion play an enormous role! Let us once again imagine that we are Shohei. If he sneaks up the stairs to the dance school, it would be tantamount to secretly entering a brothel. Shohei now enters the illuminated ballroom. His disappointment is great after he learns that his dance teacher will not be the mysterious stranger at the window. Shohei is taught by a chubby middle-aged woman. And the stranger? "She's all the sweeter when viewed from afar. So Shall We Dance is not about the love of a mirage, but about a man who finally loses his inhibitions in the Foxtrot. His own family thinks that Shohei works too much. That he should finally break out of his little life! A Japanese employee leaves early and returns very late. The relationship with his company is deeper than with his own family. In the ballroom Shohei meets different types, for example the guy with the extravagant dance style. And the beautiful stranger? She is bitter about the separation from her dance partner. But Shohei's wife has a completely different suspicion. She smells a strange perfume... Shohei, meanwhile, invites the beautiful stranger to her first masl for dinner. She strictly explains to him how important dancing is for her - and that she sincerely hopes that he has not only chosen dance lessons to meet her. I am not promising too much when I describe the last third as true Feel Good Kino. But the beginning is much better. The beautiful woman at the window with her secret. Familiarity dissolves eroticism. But of course Shohei has to climb up the stairs and a story begins. But how great would a film be if it simply maintained the atmosphere of this first shot?