Grief falls away on the dance floor in the lithe ‘Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!’

Few things are more joyous than watching people shake their booty on film. Dance movies marvelously translate primal emotions into motion, the human body becoming a supple instrument deftly communicating the pain, ecstasy and confusion of being alive. A feverish combination of athleticism and art, these films speak to the intensity of our desires while also serving as pure fantasy: None of us can dance like Fred and Ginger but think how glorious life would be if we could.

Haru, the melancholy widow at the center of “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!,” is one of those rare individuals blessed with grace and musicality, both of which she uses to showcase at local ballroom dance competitions in Tokyo. As played by Rinko Kikuchi, she doesn’t just love dance but sometimes seems to exist inside a dance movie — at least in her mind. Director Josef Kubota Wladyka illustrates the pluses and minuses of Haru’s potent imagination, resulting in a film that’s sexy, bittersweet and absurdist. But ironically, this crowd-pleaser’s chief weakness is its approach to the dancing.

“Shake Your Booty!” opens on the loving marriage between Haru and Luis (Alejandro Edda), who perform together in those Tokyo competitions. She’s from Japan, he’s from Mexico, their native languages intertwining at home, although you could argue their shared tongue is actually ballroom. To demonstrate their intimate connection, Wladyka shows them literally levitating during one competition number, a perfect Hollywood-musical moment. That’s when Luis dies of a heart attack.

A year later, Haru is still trying to pick up the pieces. She has abandoned her passion — how can she dance without Luis? — but in order to finally get herself out of the house, she eventually signs up for a class. It’s there that she meets Fedir (Alberto Guerra), a gorgeous instructor who was on “Dancing With the Stars.” The two immediately sense a spark but Haru’s grief stands in the way, not to mention that Fedir has an equally stunning wife, Mila (Keren Louis), herself a celebrated dancer.

Wladyka’s second feature was the taut, character-driven 2021 drama “Catch the Fair One,” in which Kali Reis played a former boxer who infiltrates a sex-trafficking ring to track down her sister. The lighthearted “Shake Your Booty!” couldn’t be more different and in its early stretches, the Oscar-nominated Kikuchi is exceedingly endearing. With her toadstool-like jet-black perm and dark red lipstick, Haru is a striking presence, the sensuousness of her moves conveying both longing and sorrow. Kikuchi and Guerra have such great carnal chemistry, it’s merely a matter of time before they finally go to bed. And once Haru learns he’s in an open marriage, she sees an opportunity for romance to blossom.

But in an indication of the film’s tendency to be cutesy rather than interesting, Haru does not tell Fedir about Luis’ death but, instead, keeps making flimsy excuses for why he’s never around, adding another lie by informing Fedir that she and her husband have an open marriage too. Rom-coms and dance movies are often littered with convoluted circumstances, but “Shake Your Booty!” sabotages the heartfelt story it wants to tell about finding new love and learning to let go.

Rumba, tango and cha-cha-cha are among the dance styles highlighted in “Shake Your Booty!” and as Haru and Fedir get to know each other — and each other’s bodies — Wladyka celebrates the beauty and precision that go into them. But as their love affair gets steamier and Haru frantically tries to maintain her elaborate ruse, the dance numbers lose their luster. Ill-advisedly, Wladyka introduces imaginary sequences in which Haru invents dance numbers out of ordinary situations. A late-night walk in which the couple are accosted by drunk businessmen suddenly turns into an overly choreographed dance-fight, while an evening out at a stage show of “Dirty Dancing” becomes Haru and Fedir re-creating the iconic “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” set piece.

Plenty of films measure the lamentable distance between real life and Hollywood fantasy, but there’s not enough poignancy or creative exuberance in these stilted dance sequences. Considering Haru’s guilt for “betraying” Luis — after his death, he repeatedly appears as a mournful ghost in a bird costume — these numbers should be piercingly emotional, not blandly adorable.

Even the film’s potentially provocative examination of open marriages falls by the wayside, replaced by an increasingly strained subplot involving Haru contending with Mila’s unexpected arrival. There’s an opportunity for “Shake Your Booty!” to be a refreshingly grown-up movie that dissects society’s rigid attitudes about monogamy. But here, too, Wladyka stumbles, opting for a comforting but pat ending about how dance and art enliven so many lives. “Shake Your Booty!” wants its grieving main character to get back out there on the floor, but the movie never finds a consistent rhythm for her to try it.

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: latimes.com