Dir. Peter Chelsom, 2004, USA, 106 mins
Cast:
Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Jennifer Lopez
Peter Chelsom's amiable remake of the Japanese original (Shall We Dansu ?) arrives at just the right time to capitalise on the huge success of the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing. A diverting, whimsical take on a well worn yet engaging tale, Chelsom has an uphill struggle to translate the social nuances of the original to what is essentially a big budget Hollywood retread.
When a bored lawyer John (Richard Gere) passes a dance studio he spies forlorn dancer, Paulina (Jennifer Lopez) staring out her window. He joins a dance class to get close to her, but soon finds that the freeing nature of the art form raises his spirits and enriches his empty life. As well as having to hide his newfound hobby from his wife and having romantic feelings for his teacher, he also has to disguise his passion for dance from his co-workers.
With the combined star power of Gere, Sarandon and Lopez it would seem that the film covers all bases in terms of broad appeal. However, Gere is miscast in a role that really requires somebody like Stanley Tucci (who is cast here in a supporting role) to truly sell the idea of the downtrodden everyman. There is no way that an audience can be expected to believe that John is a shy, retiring lawyer and the transformation his character makes over the course of the film is slight when it should be considerable.
Jennifer Lopez is good in a relatively thankless role despite a tendency to overplay her scenes. The vast majority of the audience may have difficulty identifying with her passion for dance and British audiences will no doubt find her references to Blackpool (home of competitive ballroom dancing) unintentionally hilarious. It is certainly not the first location you expect arch diva J-Lo to feel any sort of passion for!
It is sad to see an actress as consistently superb as Sarandon reduced to the role of thinly sketched wife. She is almost overqualified in the part. It seems a lost opportunity that the writers did not reverse genders and have Sarandon as the films protagonist in the narrative.
It seems a pity that Peter Chelsham fails again to meet the earlier promise of Hear My Song and the vastly underrated Funny Bones. While not as bland as Serendipity or as catastrophic as Town and Country, Shall We Dance? is enjoyable, light fare from a director who is capable of so much more.
If Shall We Dance? had been an original film rather than a remake, it would have been an agreeable enough romantic comedy. Unfortunately, as the original was such a socially specific commentary on Japanese culture much is lost in the translation.
Peter Chelsom admitted that he was initially was reluctant to make the film 'I lied. I said I had read the script when I hadn't when Miramax sent it to me. I think it was because I didn't want to remake such a perfect original. I didn't want to go back to that Blackpool thing. I'd made three movies which I called my Blackpool movies, the last of which was Funny Bones and it felt like old territory to me so I lied. Then they sent me the script a year later and lied to me saying there had been substantial rewrites when there had been no rewrites whatsoever. I eventually saw in Audrey Wells script that it could translate to America , that it was the same story with a different filter if you like. The Japanese movie relied on that taboo about ballroom dancing while the American version was about the shame involved in living the American dream and raising your hand and saying that it's not enough and you are not happy or to put it another way that it is possible to have everything yet be lacking something.'
Richard Gere adds 'The Western story is one about how we have not just the material stuff like the cars, nice house and the phone. This is not a dysfunctional household there's wit and charm and love and affection and sex. They have everything seemingly on all levels but there is still this yearning for something else. I think this is very relevant to our problems in the West. We do have it all and there is this itch and it's not about a traditional midlife crisis, changing your hairstyle, buying a red sports car and getting a trophy wife. We took great pains to make it not about that instead it's a mysterious yearning that became manifest in seeing this melancholy girl in an Edward Hopperesque setting that literally gets him off the train.'
Jonathan Wilkins
|
