Shall We Dance? @ Film Forum, 8:20 6/3
Last week I was ill! This week I’m not!
This week I’m seeing Masayuki Suo’s Shall We Dance? at the Film Forum! I’m going to the Tuesday at 8:20pm screening. This is the US premier of the original 137 minute cut (and a nice 4K restoration), which means it’ll finish by 10:50. I have a dual membership to the Film Forum so I can provide a discounted ticket to the first person to say they’d like to join! :)
Shall We Dance? is a 1996 Japanese film, which will be shown with English subtitles. According to Roger Ebert, it is “completely entertaining”, a “well-crafted character study that .. manipulates us but makes us like it.” He goes on to summarize (possible spoilers ahead):
“One night as he is taking the train home after work, a man (Kōji Yakusho) sees a beautiful woman (Tamiyo Kusakari) standing alone at a second floor window, lost in thought. The second night, she is there again. The sign on the window advertises ballroom dancing lessons. The third night, the man gets off the train at an unaccustomed stop and climbs the stairs to the dance studio. With these simple and direct shots, Suo establishes loneliness, mystery and allure.”
That sounds like a world that I would enjoy being pulled into for an evening.
The last movie I saw for this newsletter was Fellini’s 8 1/2. I had covid in between then and now. Perhaps because of the covid, nothing really comes to mind to say about this movie except that it had a lot of beautiful shots.