> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jeffcobeacon.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Big Screen Views: Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! - URL: https://www.jeffcobeacon.com/big-screen-views-ha-chan-shake-your-booty/ - Published: 2026-10-07T01:16:42.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-07T01:16:42.000Z - Description: Trilingual film moves through bliss and sorrow. - Author: Diane Urbani de la Paz - Tags: Arts & Culture, Big Screen Views, Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!, Movie review, Rose Theatre, Diane Urbani de la Paz The dancers lift off, fueled by their personal chemistry. Up, up and away they rise, high over the floor, into a state of bliss. Here are two people dancing through life, eyes locked, bodies aligned. And then one of them is gone. A heart attack rips Luis from Haru’s arms, turning “Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!” into a movie about love, grief, visitations from the dead, and how dance can heal us. Haru, portrayed by Rinko Kikuchi, is one of the most sympathetic characters I’ve seen on screen in a long while. Her beloved husband perishes on the dance floor in their home city of Tokyo, and in comes her sister and cousin, urging her to move on. Haru must also cope with Luis’ parents, who want to take his body “home” to Mexico for burial. Pain fills the scene. Then comes the first visitation from a shiny, black, man-sized crow. Luis. Haru is enfolded in her beloved’s wings, and we’re pulled into this film that mixes multiple languages, magical realism and, at just the right moment, a song by the Cranberries. What are these multiple languages, you ask? Haru and Luis start the movie speaking Spanish and Japanese. Luis has come to Japan from Mexico, and is in fact portrayed with perfect gentleness by the Mexican actor Alejandro Edda. Haru, who is Japanese, speaks her first language with her relatives. Subtitles are provided for the Spanish and Japanese dialogue. Later, English is spoken. Haru begins a relationship with her new dance teacher, the impossibly gorgeous Fedir, played by Cuban-Mexican actor Alberto Guerra. They also speak the language of lust and sex, while Haru tells Fedir a lie in order to get something she wants. ![Haru (Rinko Kikuchi) in blue with dance partner in background. ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c6/a2/c6a241c6-69f5-450c-9fd7-6b170730e448/content/images/2026/10/Ha-Chan--Shake-Your-Booty--photo-2-2.jpg) **In “Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!” Haru (Rinko Kikuchi) faces a future without her beloved partner. Image from Sony Pictures Classics* “Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!” comes to us from director Josef Kubota Wladyka, the son of Japanese and Polish parents. He grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, in a house where two cultures were stirred together like a spicy plate of sustenance. His Japanese mother, Haru Wladyka, was a single parent raising him and his two brothers, while working—and dancing. In an NPR interview, Wladyka said dance was the steadfast thing that got her through hard times. “She would always tell me that it kind of saved her life in a lot of ways,” he tells NPR host Scott Simon. Wladyka’s movie, his third feature film, is dedicated “for Mom.” When she attended the premiere of “Ha-chan” at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Mom got a standing ovation, the director adds in the interview. At 81, his mother is still an avid dancer who continues to compete in ballroom events. As for Wladyka, he won the Sundance prize for best director of a dramatic feature. He wins my vote for best director of a trilingual romantic drama about how music and dance free us—to connect with one another and with ourselves. Epilogue: George Marie, co-owner of the Rose Theatre and Starlight Room, introduced “Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!” at the Starlight on opening night last Friday. She said it’s one of three “art films” playing—which spells disaster, financially, for the theaters. That doesn’t have to be true. To offer a reminder from the [Beacon article](https://www.jeffcobeacon.com/owners-of-the-rose-and-starlight-room-consider-changes-closures-due-to-financial-concerns/) about the Rose that ran in July: If people in Jefferson County go out to the movies once a month, our local cinemas’ chances for survival go through the roof. In light of the Port Townsend Film Festival that just happened, I want to advocate not only for the experience of seeing a movie in an actual theater, but also for chatting with your fellow film-goers. The festival provided ample opportunities for that, with its free lounge in the Cotton Building and “intermissions” on Taylor Street every evening. When I came out into the lobby of the Starlight Room after seeing “Ha-chan,” Marie asked me: “What did you think?” I responded that I felt for Haru, in all of her struggles. Marie said she appreciated the surrealism in the movie. And there, my friends, is a satisfying post-film conversation, one that enhanced the experience, like an olive in the martini.