a corner of biscuits and warm tea

I just finished Shall We Dance (1996) this past week. It's a pretty light-hearted comedic film about a salary man who was trapped in a monotonous rut until he encounters a beautiful woman (ballroom dance teacher) at a window of a building as he was heading home in a train, he sees her by the window pretty often. One day, he skipped his path to a train station and ended up visiting the building by signing himself to the dance courses. After a few dance classes, he asked her out to dinner-- she rejected him by telling him that she prefers not to go out with her students (big yikes, because he's a married man with a teenage daughter). She takes dancing seriously and reminded him that the dance studio is to not be treated like a "disco". This has been a common occurrences for her and these are the type of students don't stick around dancing for too long, because they were more interested in her than the dance lessons. The MC continued to show up to the dance courses because he wanted to prove to the dance instructor that he's not that type of person.....Good thing is, he actually later then realized that he fell in love with ballroom dancing and even became friends with his classmates! One of his classmates happens to be his co-worker and they both agreed to keep their hobby a secret from their work life, the main character also kept his hobby a secret from his family. I don't think the director did enough to show the consequences or the reparations between the main character and his spouse ..it is almost as if they romanticized the main character's intent to commit adultery?

Otherwise, it was a decent film to watch! They did a charming job showcasing a shy, nearly mid-aged man picking up a new hobby, not being particularly great at it first, but does become a good dancer (mainly waltz style) as weeks passes by-- the most important part is that he truly enjoys it, dancing made him happy. The sight of watching his mid-aged classmates encouraging each other to dance better and see them all attending competitions together was very cute. ..They all felt like a team and each of his friends got different strengths in different dance styles.

This movie makes me think of hobbies in general and that one can never be too old, too this, or too that to get into a new interest. This isn't anything new, there have been countless of research that having hobbies is a great way to keep your brain strong!