A bored accountant spots a beautiful woman in the window of a ballroom dance studio. He secretly starts taking dancing lessons to be near her, and then over time discovers how much he loves dancing. His wife, meanwhile, has hired a private detective to find out why he has started coming home late smelling of perfume.
Acting
Koji Yakusho's suppressed longing in every stiff bow.
Direction
Suō lets silences breathe; embarrassment becomes poetry.
Cinematography
The dance studio glows like a portal to another existence.
Director
Masayuki Suō
Koji Yakusho
Shohei Sugiyama
Tamiyo Kusakari
Mai Kishikawa
Naoto Takenaka
Tomio Aoki
Eri Watanabe
Toyoko Takahashi
Akira Emoto
Detective Miwa
Yuu Tokui
Tokichi Hattori
Hiromasa Taguchi
Masahiro Tanaka
Reiko Kusamura
Tamako Tamura
Hideko Hara
Masako Sugiyama
Kunihiko Ida
Teiji Kaneko
Ayano Nakamura
Chikage Sugiyama
Tomiko Ishii
Haruko Haraguchi
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Real ballroom dancer Tamiyo Kusakari had never acted before; Suō cast her after seeing her compete. Her stiffness reads as mysterious, but it's genuine nerves.
The 'Heisei era salaryman' archetype here—devoted to company, invisible at home—was already fading in 1996, making Shohei's crisis almost nostalgic. Hollywood's 2004 remake stripped this entirely.
JP
