Josef Kubota Wladyka directs this script he co-wrote with Nicholas Huynh about Haru (Rinko Kikuchi), who loved competitive ballroom dancing with her husband, Luis (Alejandro Edda), in the Tokyo dance scene, but after losing Luis to a heart attack, she isolates herself. Nine months later, her sister Yuki (Yoh Yoshida) and friend Hiromi (Yukiko “You” Ehara) encourage her to return to dance, where she finds herself falling for her new instructor, Fedir (Alberto Guerra), who’s in an open marriage with professional dancer Mila (Keren Louis), who lives in Paris. (in Japanese, English, and Spanish; 122 min.)
HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY
What’s it rated? R
What’s it worth, Meg? Full price
What’s it worth, Glen? Full price
Where’s it showing? The Palm Theatre in SLO
Editor’s note: Anna Starkey is walking the Camino in Spain, so former Palm Theatre employee and current Atascadero English teacher Meghan Higdon is stepping in again.
Glen Director Wladyka is best known for TV series such as Tokyo Vice and Narcos, or his two gritty crime films Manos sucias and Catch the Fair One, so this is something of a departure—a magical realist dramedy about grief and getting your groove back. Haru is shattered when Luis dies suddenly. Full of symbolism and fantasy, the film finds Haru manifesting Luis as a mascot-style crow—representing death and sorrow—who comes to their home to comfort her. The crow represents both her loss and what blocks her from moving on. The story also breaks into Bollywood-style song-and-dance routines. Haru is in her head, and it’s a weird and troubled place, but the film is about her processing her grief and finding her way back to a happy life. As her sister, Yuki, says, “It’s OK to be messy. That’s life, you know.”
Meg The tonal shift from the director’s earlier work may be explained by the more personal nature of this film. It’s dedicated to his mother, and I’m not going to lie, I got choked up at the end credits where it shows a real photo of Wladyka’s mom ballroom dancing. While this is not a biographical film, he says this was inspired by her love of dancing and the way that it carried her through hard times. Haru’s character design was pulled directly from old photos of his mother, down to the funky outfits and questionable perm. This is a silly, funny, and ultimately touching film about grief and loss. It reminds me of Joan Didion’s touchstone meditation on the subject, A Year of Magical Thinking. In it, Didion explains there is an illogic to grief that can border on fantastical. The hallucinatory world that Haru slips in and out of is a byproduct of this, a protection from feeling the full force of her heartbreak and loss. For this reason, the magical elements felt perfectly reasonable. Her husband, Luis, appearing as the kind of adorable but dark crow is an apt metaphor for the way grief haunts a space and a life, long after the person has gone.
Glen There’s certainly a lot of joy amid the sadness. Broken into six chapters and an epilogue, the film traces Haru’s painful journey as she navigates her loss. Fedir is her pathway to learning to open herself to love again, but she blows it big time in a cringe-worthy reaction to his wife Mila’s appearance. Haru is messy indeed, but there’s hope for her.
Meg Oh yes, the joy cannot be overstated! The thing that keeps this film buoyant despite its heavy subject is that Haru has an irrepressible lust for life that refuses to die alongside her husband. Aesthetically, Wladyka reflects Haru’s will to live by creating a film that is sensual, saturated with color, and genuinely pleasurable to watch. ∆
Arts Editor Glen Starkey and contributor Meghan Higdon wrote Split Screen this week. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 15-22, 2026.
