10DANCE

This film has a little of the intensity of "Kokohu" (2025) to it as the recent runner-up at the World Ballroom Championships - "Sugiki" (Keita Machida) offers to teach his accomplished Latin rival "Suzuki" (Ryoma Takeuchi) some of the more nuanced techniques of dancing that he admits he doesn't yet possess - all so that one of them can win the notoriously difficult 10 dance competition - an event that features everything from the Viennese Waltz to the Rumba. The two men are opposites incarnate. The former is a debonaire, stylish and measured individual whilst the latter, with blonde streaks in his hair, lives his life in a much faster and more relaxed fashion. Indeed, right from the beginning of their association, you wouldn't put much money on it delivering anything at all. The thing is, though, that as the pair begin to dance together the nature of the relationships between not just them but with their female partners too, slowly begins to shift and that changing dynamic serves to ask both men about themselves and what truly motivates them. This is a film about an increasingly intimate power-play between two men, and both actors deliver quite emotionally-charged performances but using largely different, yet complementary, methods. Moreover, we also discover something of the discipline required to dance like they do: the sheer muscular strength, the breathing, the balance and ultimately the ability to convince those watching (and judging) that there is some chemistry between those participating. It's like watching some ritual mating scenes between puffed-up birds, elegantly and meticulously posing with precise postures but never quite sealing the deal - as it were. Yes, there are elements here that are predicable, but they are applied in more roundabout routes and at no stage did I actually feel that I knew just what was going to happen by the time they got to the Asian Cup at the end. It isn't so unusual to see a film that's on the surface about male love and romance but this goes a little deeper and becomes more about precision, trust and power and with quite some effort gone into the production and the soundtrack, it's well worth a look.