I love a good surprise. Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!’s trailers made the film look like forgettable fun: a star vehicle for Rinko Kikuchi. So imagine my surprise at the halfway point, where I almost started levitating out of my chair like Ha-Chan does, ready and willing to go shoulder shimmy right then and there, to shake my own Booty. Though likely to something by Lil John or Usher instead of Haru’s choices.
Kikuchi plays Haru, happily married to Luis (Alejandro Edda), living their lives to try to win Latin Dance Competitions in Tokyo. Tragedy strikes on the dance floor, as poor Luis has a heart attack and dies. Haru is devastated, mourning over a year confined to her house. Her sister/friends Hiromi (You) and Yuki (Yoh Yoshida) eventually convince her to shake that booty again at dance lessons, where the instructor, Fedir (Alberto Guerra) hits widowed Haru like a bolt of lightning, conjuring feelings she thought she would never feel again.
Writer director Josef Kubota Wladyka has great instincts for how to tell this story. First principles: show don’t tell always. Whenever Haru is backed into a corner emotionally, time for a dance sequence. Those sequences convey more than any words ever could, while also dazzling the eyes and the hearts. Sometimes it’s sad, like a slow dance mourning her deceased Luis. Other times it’s a sexy fever dream. And then there’s pure movie magic, outside the Ueno Tokyo station, set to “Be My Baby”, that’s incredibly inventive and perfect for the low stakes human story Wladyka wants to tell about Haru.
And that story is more complex than you think it’s going to be. Ha-Chan mixes the sad and the happy together like real life does. While Haru is inconsolable in her house, Hiromi and Yuki come over for some tough love, calling her a basic bitch daring her to get out again, not quite what you expect from the reserved Japanese. When Fedir shows up, we’re in romcom land, as Haru hilariously learns what “open relationship” means among other language barrier connections she makes with her instructor. While that’s going on, Luis’s presence remains, giving the romcom a surreal element that emotionally evolves as Haru does. That welcome connection becomes a darker, scarier burden as time goes on, and Haru gets ready to move on. And keeping this all working magically is Rinko Kikuchi, physically and performatively giving her all to the movie, in all sorts of amazing outfits accompanied by that curly perm of hers.
Ha-Chan Shake Your Booty! loses some steam as it concludes, just like you do the last hour of a wedding. But that’s the time for rest anyways, as you remember the euphoria of that incredible reception you had before. Such is the power of dancing, releasing all your inhibitions and feeling the rain on your skin. No one else can feel it for you. Only you can let in in.