Starring: Meisa Kuroki, Kaori Momoi, Ara, Miku Sano, Ken Maeda
Director: Lee Chi-ngai
Category: IIA (Japanese)
Ballet has rarely been made so worthy an object of teen aspiration as in this adaptation of Masahito Soda's manga about budding Japanese dancers.
Scripted by director Lee Chi-ngai and shot on location in Tokyo and Shanghai, it breathes life into the original's two-dimensional depictions and, while not achieving genuine three dimensionality, conjures up enough substance to hold a viewer's attention for nearly two hours.
Dance Subaru! not only marks a welcome return to cinema for Lee, who delivered such notable 1990s features as Alan and Eric: Between Hello and Goodbye (1990) and Tom, Dick and Hairy (1993), but it is in many ways his most complete work to date. It's no small task getting an audience to accept the comic book world that is home to Subaru Miyamoto (Meisa Kuroki, right). But in Lee's hands, one is willing to suspend disbelief and enter into the young woman's vacuum-like universe where life is stripped down to plot essentials with no room for 'extraneous' matters that might intrude on Subaru's reality.
