Shall we dance? - 2004

I love this film, I really do. When it came out in Italy I didn't want to see it because the trailer was all wrong. They simply showed John (Richard Gere) looking at Pauline (Jennifer Lopez), and then the two of them dancing a tango together, making it look like they had an affair, thus destroying the whole movie. One day though I watched it on tv (it's free on tv) and I completely loved it, it was nothing like that trailer. The story here is that John has a job and a family that he loves, a wife, Beverly (Susan Sarandon) that he loves, and two children, a 14 y.o. daughter and an older son. Still, after twenty years of the same life, he feels like something's missing inside. Day after day coming back from work by train he sees Pauline looking out of the window with a melancholic look on her face, and he sees in her what he feels inside, in a way. One day he decides to go take a look. She works for Miss Mitzi's dance school, and John starts taking lessons. He doesn't even know what he's doing, until one day he asks Paulina out to dinner, well he asks her if she wants to grab a bite together or something like that, and she thinks what every girl would think at that point: that he's hitting on her. She tells him that if he joined the school aiming at her, he's wasting his time. He's kind of hurt, and thinks of ending the lessons, until he realises that he wants to dance! So he goes back. I mean, you can't blame her for saying those things. In nowadays society kindness is not usual. If a guy is nice to you, complimenting you, there's always a reason, it's never just disinterested kindness. It's perfectly understandable. On the other hand, I think sometimes men are probably careful about complimenting women they're not interested in in case they might think they're hitting on them... anyway, John goes back and he's really enjoying dancing, so much that it shows by looking at him. His daughter even tells mom that 'dad is happier lately' and she starts worrying, because she knows nothing about it. She's worried that he might have an affair, expecially because, as she says to the private investigator she hires to follow him, he's not the kind to have an unimportant fling, so if he's having an affair it's probably something important, and she wants to know and be prepared. She's kind of shocked to learn the truth. I mean, it's better than the alternative, but it's still a shock because it looks like he's a different man in some way. She tells the P.i. a nice story about what a marriage is, you know, the promise between two people that your life will never pass unnoticed 'because I'll be there to witness it', so even if he's no more working for her he tells her of the dance competition John has entered with his school. His daughter starts yelling encouraging words, to support him, with the result that he realises that they are there, and he's completely shocked!! Even more than her. Somehow this changes everything for him, he's embarassed about it. He apologises to his wife, saying he didn't tell anything because he was ashamed to admit that he wanted to be even happier that he already is, and other words like that, concluding that he won't dance anymore. 

'You could teach me' says Beverly. He shows her the letter Pauline wrote him, in order to have no more secrets between them, and she understands that this was important for him, and enourages him to go to Pauline's goodbye party. He puts on a very smart-looking dress, all elegant and charming with a red rose in his hand, and goes to see Bev at work, and he's very charming, and the scene is lovely and romantic. Then together they go to the party where John introduces her to his friends and dances a last dance with Paulina. It all ends in music and a few scenes that show us where the characters are now, some time after.
It's a lovely lovely film, full of beautiful music and I like it very much. I also like the fact that Stanley Tucci is in here, because I like him very much; he's Link, a man that works in the same studio as John, and is thought to be a huge football fan, while the truth is he likes to wear shiny dresses and dance: it was really hard to watch when he danced with that long-hair-wig and the false teeth, all shiny and fake. oh God. Why some man make such a fuss of being bald? I don't understand... anyway he looses all that stuff in the end, and ends up with Bobby, the big blonde crazy about dancing too.
The end is lovely, and I'm happy they didn't make this a film about cheating as the trailer suggested. This way is adorable and beautiful.