Strictly Soft Gloom: Wladyka’s Bereft Bliss Puts Spotlight on Rinko Kikuchi
Healing comes in baby steps — and dance steps in Josef Kubota Wladyka’s warm and rebellious third feature film outing. Conjoining the absurd with reality-check seriousness, like a trendy fusion restaurant, Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! blends cultures, genres, languages, tones and various states of melancholy with unexpected buoyancy making for a film where the past tense exists in the present. Playing the one left behind, Rinko Kikuchi is in exquisite comedic form, anchoring the film with a character who is open, wounded, and flawed. Its flirtation with schmaltz, paired with an overuse of humor, blunts what might otherwise be a more piercing reckoning with grief, however, on the flip-side, the Japan-set, trilingual tug-of-war with memory is deeply in tune with ideas of rebirth and the subtle, interior work of renewal and emerges as a cathartic charmer.
Inspired by Wladyka’s Japanese mother — herself a devoted social dancer — the Tokyo-set film centers on Haru (Kikuchi), a middle-aged ballroom dancer whose eye-catching fro and vivid, slightly awkward style conceal a profound emotional rupture. How many Japanese women approaching the half-century mark sport a nose ring? Clearly she is cut from a different cloth. Her ride or die, Mexican husband and dance partner Luis (Alejandro Edda) is taken away from her — but is it for good? In the aftermath of a dance floor death, Haru retreats into isolation, refusing even to release Luis’ body to his family in Mexico, convinced his spirit must remain close. Months later, she is reluctantly pulled back into the world by her sister Yuki (Yoh Yoshida) and her blunt, brash cousin Hiromi (YOU), who drag her out of her home (adorned with a serious vinyl collection, movie posters for popular dance films and a possible mascot) to a dance class where Haru is instantly captivated by the charismatic instructor Fedir (Alberto Guerra). From there, we find a lot of playfulness which masks the pain, we find dance and bedroom antics serving as a way to not sit with the discomfort. We rumba, cha-cha, and tango towards a widow’s re-awakening.
While a complete shift away from his last feature Catch the Fair One (2021), we once again find ourselves with a centered (and defiant) female protagonist. Kikuchi carries the film flexing various muscles – from impressive dance steps to comedy cues – some moments of loss are palpable up until Haru’s crush on Fedir pulls her back into society. She’ll tickle auds when her behavior becomes impulsive or unmoored and an imaginative ménage à trois says more about how deeply rooted pleasure is when we can’t evacuate sorrow or can’t navigate the impact of our emotions as we usually do.
Buoyed by a fun and varied supporting cast of dance and sparring partners, while definitely scatterbrain when it explores grief, its repeated affirmation that we are allowed to feel, move, and believe we’ve earned our own “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” moment occasionally borders on overemphasis. Shot by cinematographer Daniel Satinoff, there is a agreeable balance between what is the imagined and the real, between escapism and the many footnotes of emotional grieving. The choreography feels restrained and intimate and when Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! swerves into fantasy its catchy and feels vibrant — and is methodically threaded with the notion of letting go, and that even finality can be cheerfully addressed.
Reviewed on January 29th (virtually) at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival (41st edition) – U.S. Dramatic Competition section. 122 mins.
★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
