Review: Grief falls away on the dance floor in the lithe 'Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!'
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Set us as preferred Few things are more joyous than watching people shake their booty on film.Dance movies marvelously translate primal emotions into motion, the human body becoming a supple instrument deftly communicating the pain, ecstasy and confusion of being alive.
A feverish combination of athleticism and art, these films speak to the intensity of our desires while also serving as pure fantasy: None of us can dance like Fred and Ginger but think how glorious life would be if we could.Haru, the melancholy widow at the center of “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!,” is one of those rare individuals blessed with grace and musicality, both of which she uses to showcase at local ballroom dance competitions in Tokyo.As played by Rinko Kikuchi, she doesn’t just love dance but sometimes seems to exist inside a dance movie — at least in her mind.
Director Josef Kubota Wladyka illustrates the pluses and minuses of Haru’s potent imagination, resulting in a film that’s sexy, bittersweet and absurdist.But ironically, this crowd-pleaser’s chief weakness is its approach to the dancing.“Shake Your Booty!” opens on the loving marriage between Haru and Luis (Alejandro Edda), who perform together in those Tokyo competitions.
She’s from Japan, he’s from Mexico, their native languages intertwining at home, although you could argue their shared tongue is actually ballroom.To demonstrate their intimate connection, Wladyka shows them literally levitating during one competition number, a perfect Hollywood-musical moment.
That’s when Luis dies of a heart attack.Movies Our three Sundance correspondents, Amy Nicholson, Mark Olsen and Joshua Rothkopf, pick their favorites from this year’s lineup and reflect on memories of Park City.A year later, Haru is still trying to pick up the pieces.
She has abandoned her passion — how c...