Now here's another flick that I was not expecting to be anything special, but which turned out to be a feel-good surprise. The film is inspired by the life of Pierre Dulaine, played by Antonio Banderas, who was an ex-ballroom dancing champion and the proprietor of an upmarket dance studio in New York. I'm glad that the word was "inspired", since the fictionalization of his achievement quite probably bears little relationship to reality. The film tells us that by chance he found himself at an inner city school to follow up a street crime that he witnessed and offers to watch over the very worst i.e. troubleseome students in "detention" after school, since none of the teachers can be bothered to do so.
I always thought that detention was an extra silent study period, but these kids --- a couple of fatties, black, hispanic, oriental, and even one or two whites -- treat it as a hip-hop dance session. So Banderas determines to teach them ballroom dancing as a metaphor for courtesy and self-belief. The principal of the school is Alfre Woodard who has photos of former students on the wall of her office -- not those who had achieved any kind of academic honour, but those who were killed during her tenure. Of course she and her staff believe that Banderas is bound to fail, even if they are struck by his politeness and charming ways, and of course they are all wrong -- or there would be no story. And having seen the documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom", one now knows that Dulaine's philosophy has spread wide in New York and beyond.
What makes this movie so enjoyable is the growing happiness and acceptance of others amongst these potential misfits and one truly believes that a better future can await them. There is also a wonderful bit of business concerning an insecure deb from the dance school who finds her confidence with the biggest and blackest kid of the lot; when he turns up at her cotillion to lead her in the first waltz, one can't help but smile broadly, especially since one knows that this probably never happened.
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