| Cast: Koji Yakusho: Shohei Sugiyama Tamiyo Kusakari: Mai Kishikawa Naoto Takenaka: Tomio Aoki Eriko Watanabe: Toyoko Takahashi Emoto Akira: Toru Miwa Reiko Kusamura: Tamako Tamura Yu Tokui: Tokichi Hattori Hiromasa Taguchi: Masahiro Tanaka |
| Run time: 136 min. Release date: January 27, 1996 Directed by Masayuki Suo Scinario: Masayuki Suo Music: Yoshikazu Suo |
| Sugiyama confesses to Mai; What started me dancing was you gazing out of the window like that .... You can see the classroom window from the train. Every day on the way home I looked for you. When I saw you, somehow I felt relieved ... or disappointed if you weren't there. Your look of melancholy ... it totally charmed me. I married at twenty-eight, had a child by thirty. At forty years old, I bought the home I had longed for. Marriage, kids, a house ... I've worked so hard for it all. I honestly thought mine was a happy life. But after I bought the house, something suddenly changed. It's not that I'm unhappy with my wife or that I don't love my child. But something was wrong. Then I met you. Watching you everyday, I began to want to know what it'd be like to dance with you, even once. |
| The meeting with Masayuki Suo and Koji Yakusho is now a legend! Do you know where Koji Yakusho first met Masayuki Suo, the director of "Shall We Dance?" They met in an elevator a few months before the film started. Suo wanted to meet Koji Yakusho to find if he was a suitable actor for the hero, Sugiyama: he later said that he was actually not so sure of Yakusho's suitability for the role since the director's image of Sugiyama was that of a plain ordinary man, whereas his view of Yakusho was too good-looking and smart for Sugiyama. Yakusho, on the other hand, had long wanted to work with Suo even in a minor role ever since he saw Suo's previous film, "Shiko Funjatta" (1992) Both Suo and Yakusho got into the same elevator on the day of the meeting. But Suo confessed that he had not recognized Yakusho at all, until he was spoken to by Yakusho: he looked like quite an ordinary middle-aged man, and not a film star! |
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| Eriko Watanabe, Koji Yakusho and Tamiyo Kusakari |
| Shall we dance/dansu? (1996) |
| Interview with Koji Yakusho (Unofficial translation by Pymmik) It was of course skill in dancing that was needed to perform the role of Sugiyama in "Shall We Dance?". People cast in other roles seemed to need to practice different kinds of dancing, but in my case, luckily only the waltz and the quick-step were needed. I think that I must have practiced dancing for about 40 days before shooting started, practicing two hours a day. Since it was the first time that I had done ballroom dancing, I couldn't help feeling shy and embarrassed at first. It was lucky for me that it was the modern type of ballroom dancing. Thirty minutes after starting the dancing practice, my awkwardness disappeared and I was able to do it in a more relaxed manner; after all it was 'work'. If it had been Latin dancing, it would have been much more difficult to achieve this. It was part of my role in acting this time that I shouldn't forget my first embarrasment too quickly. The essence of Sugiyama's role is that he gradually improves his dancing as the story develops, so naturally he can't dance well from the first moment. In fact, like Sugiyama, I felt irritated when I couldn't make good steps in the beginning, and I felt moved when I found my own dancing improving little by little. As I repeated the dancing while shooting the movie, I felt such embarrassment diminishing. Therefore I, too, tried not to forget my initial feelings, nor the mental impact I got when I first saw Mr Takenaka (Aoki) and Ms Watanabe (Toyoko) dancing! I enjoyed the filming of this movie very much. The marvelous thing about director Suo was that he was able to make both the cast and the staff enjoy filming, keeping a relaxed attitude. I had long been a fan of director Suo myself. When I first saw "Shiko Funjatta" I was very impressed, but as both "Shiko Funjatta" and " Fancy Dancing" were for young people, I had thought that the chances of my working with him would be very thin; then I was asked to appear under his direction in "Shall We Dance?". While I worked with director Suo, I was able to understand him very well. This was probably because we were of the same generation.ration. I found that we shared the tastes in dramas and also had a similar sense of humor. He was very flexible in mind, and his directing was concrete and easy to understand. I think he is really a superb director. If there is a chance, I'd like to work with him again. Based on "Kinema Jumpo", January, 1996 issue (No. 1182) |
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| Mai: Shall we dance? |
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