May i ask

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Movie
German title May i ask
Original title Shall We Dance?
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2004
length 106 minutes
Age rating FSK o. A.
JMK 0
Rod
Director Peter Chelsom
script Audrey Wells
production Simon Fields
music Gabriel Yared ,
John Altman
camera John de Borman
cut Charlie Ireland
occupation

May i ask is the title of a US dance film from 2004, produced by Miramax Films and directed by Peter Chelsom . It is a remake of the Japanese film Shall we dance? (1996) by Masayuki Suo .

action

The Chicago lawyer John Clark actually has everything one needs to be happy: a wife who loves him, two children and a secure existence. Yet he feels a kind of dissatisfaction and an inner emptiness. On the way home, he takes the elevated train past a dance school every evening and often sees a dance teacher standing at the window who looks absently melancholy outside. Fascinated by her, he decides to secretly register for a dance class there. But even when it becomes clear to him that Paulina doesn't want to know anything about him, he continues dancing and finally even prepares to take part in a dance tournament.

His wife becomes suspicious of his increasingly better mood. That's why she hires a detective and learns about his secret . She goes to the tournament with her daughter. When Clark notices this, he gets out of step, so that his partner Bobbie suddenly finds himself in a petticoat after a collision with another couple. John gives up dancing, but his wife realizes what it means to him. After a reconciliation, they go to dance school to say goodbye to Paulina, who wants to dance at tournaments again.

The film music

The theme music Shall We Dance varies from tango rhythms and salsa arrangements to the song in Spanglish , sung by Gizelle D'Cole and Pilar Montenegro . The song Shall We Dance originally comes from the musical The King and I and became known in the film version with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner . The American R'n'B singer Mýa sings a cover version of the David Bowie classic Let's Dance as a slow hip-hop variant including a rap interlude. The tango between the two main actors is danced to Santa maría (del buen ayre) by Gotan Project . There are also two Mexican boleros : Perfidia by the Chiapas- born composer Alberto Domínguez Borras and ¿Quién será? by Pablo Beltrán Ruiz from Sinaloa . The latter is known in the United States as the English cover version Sway ( Dean Martin et al.); in the final sequence he is covered by the group Pussycat Dolls with Nicole Scherzinger .

The music is available as a soundtrack on CD and as an MP3 download, but it does not contain the tracks Livin 'It Up by Ja Rule in the bar , which can be heard in the film, and the song Shall We Dance from the musical The King and I.

The dance scenes

For the dance scenes, professional dancers - with the exception of the flashbacks and the original introductory scene - were largely dispensed with. All actors are dance amateurs who had to be specially trained and prepared for the film. Richard Gere, who previously just in the film - Musical Chicago had participated (2002), completed a four-month dance course. Jennifer Lopez also had to learn new dances such as waltzes , tango , quickstep and paso doble . As a passionate hobby dancer in the film, director Peter Chelsom tried to keep the dance scenes as natural as possible because of the credibility. Dance scenes from the competition that seem too perfect have been cut out, but are included on the DVD version.

Awards

Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere were nominated for the Teen Choice Award in 2005. The song The Book Of Love was nominated for a Golden Satellite Award in 2005.

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

DVD release

The German-language DVD was released on March 17, 2005. In addition to an audio commentary by the director, there are various background reports (dance hall for beginners, behind the scenes, the music for the film), the music video "Sway" by the Pussycat Dolls and six longer scenes (alternative beginning, "Dr. Dance" -XL -Hiphop version, Link and Bobbie doing the rumba, Paulina trains with John, The competition, Paulina dances with the children). The alternative beginning is of particular interest, as this was done in an unusual way by professional dancers, choreographically and cinematically, but Chelsom did without it because otherwise one would have expected a different film. The actual beginning now begins in the cut that he originally fades from the legs of the Quickstep dancing couples to John's legs in a parallel montage.

Trivia

  • The Japanese original was sold in the United States in 1997 under the title of the same name (Shall we dance?) . An introductory comment has been added to this, in which a speaker explains to the viewer that standard dance is considered unmanly in Japan and is less socially accepted. This comment is superfluous in the American remake.
  • Although the film is set in Chicago , the majority of the footage was shot in Winnipeg , Manitoba , for cost reasons . For the recordings of the elevated railway, a separate film team was allowed to collect material on one day of shooting.
  • The film had a budget of $ 49 million and took only five weeks to shoot.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Age rating for May I ask? Youth Media Commission .
  2. ↑ Audio commentary

Web links