--- title: In 'Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!' Dance and Desire Are Remedies for Grief description: Rinko Kikuchi stars as a widow learning to face the music, and the world, after death stopped her in her tracks. canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/09/25/ha-chan-shake-your-booty-review/ author: Stephanie Zacharek article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-09-25T19:41:28.591Z article:modified_time: 2026-09-25T19:41:28.834Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: In 'Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!,' Dance and Desire Are Remedies for Grief og:description: Rinko Kikuchi stars as a widow learning to face the music, and the world, after death stopped her in her tracks. og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/09/25/ha-chan-shake-your-booty-review/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt101336f59879259c/6ab6bc6e44523f9a22b92ba3/hcsyb4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: hcsyb4.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: In 'Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!,' Dance and Desire Are Remedies for Grief twitter:description: Rinko Kikuchi stars as a widow learning to face the music, and the world, after death stopped her in her tracks. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt101336f59879259c/6ab6bc6e44523f9a22b92ba3/hcsyb4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # In _Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!_, Dance and Desire Are Remedies for Grief > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Sep 25, 2026 7:41 PM UTC  Rinko Kikuchi in Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! Rinko Kikuchi in Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Sep 25, 2026 7:41 PM UTC Grief does funny things to people; sometimes it even makes them a little crazy. That’s what happens to bereaved widow Haru, played by Rinko Kikuchi, in Josef Kubota Wladyka’s bittersweet comedy _Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!_ Haru lives happily in Tokyo with her husband, Luis (Alejandro Edda), who’s also her dance partner—the two enjoy competitive ballroom dancing, a joyous physical representation of the relaxed, real-life romance that plays out at home. Then Luis is taken from Haru. She stops seeing friends and family and, worse yet, stops dancing. Nine months later, when she’s finally persuaded to return to the studio for a class, a new instructor, Alberto Guerra’s Fedir, stops her cold: He’s a fantastic dancer, and handsome as a stallion. A fling might be just what she needs. Or could it be the worst thing? That’s just the barest outline of Haru’s plight. The movie Wladyka, along with his cowriter Nicholas Huynh, has built around her is a swirl of unchained desire, of fantasy dance sequences that unfold on ordinary Tokyo streets, and totally messy feelings. There’s no easy, one-size-fits-all way to navigate the loss of a loved one, just one of the truths that _Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!_ navigates with warmth and humor. The movie is pleasing, if slight, though Kikuchi’s performance is nuanced enough to keep you watching, and to keep you rooting for her.  As Haru, Kikuchi (center) is surrounded by a swirl of unchained desire Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics The intimacy between Haru and Luis is reflected in the warmth of the home they’ve built together—most notably a wall of LPs, fronted by a turntable, that serves as a kind of hearth, which makes sense for two people who love to dance. It looks like heaven, but for Haru it becomes a kind of limbo, a place where the dead and the living rub shoulders, sometimes uneasily. After Luis’ death, Haru can barely bring herself to face the music, either literally or figuratively. She still feels his presence everywhere, and she sees it, too: he rather whimsically appears to her in the form a big black Tweety Bird with dark, shiny eyes. His human arms reach for her beneath his bird wings, and she allows herself to be enfolded in his embrace. It’s both a comforting place to be and one that’s a little dangerous. When Haru meets Fedir—whose wife is a Paris-based dance champion, though the marriage is an open one—she glimpses fresh possibilities, or at least just an adventure. In an early scene, after she and Fedir have had a pleasant, platonic dinner together, they’re ready to part ways in the street. A crew of drunken businessmen jostle Haru, and Fedir stands up for her. What follows is a cleverly choreographed dream ballet—though the genre is actually the bachata, one of the dance forms Fedir teaches, its movements an expression of longing and heartache—in which Fedir defends Haru’s honor against this gang of boorish men. Other passersby join in, and the scene becomes a metaphor for the act of rejoining life. By the end of the evening, Haru and Fedir have tumbled into bed. Their two hookups are enjoyable and tender—until the wife shows up, and Haru realizes she has feelings she can’t control. Kikuchi shifts gears smoothly: One minute, she shows how Haru is nearly deadened by sorrow. The next, her exhilaration becomes a kind of artificial sunshine. But a flash of anger and jealousy causes her to act out, in a scene that makes you recoil a bit even as you laugh. Kikuchi is perhaps best known for her roles in movies like _Babel_ and _Pacific Rim,_ as well as HBO’s _Tokyo Vice,_ several episodes of which Wladyka directed. Here, she captures the spirit of a woman who longs to get back to being herself, if only she could remember who that self was. Haru is both breezy and cautious, and totally lost. By the movie's end, she has found her way forward, because she realizes there’s no going back. She’ll have to be a new person, encompassing the experiences and memories of the old one. Kikuchi captures that difficult butterfly transition as it unfolds; it’s both painful and funny to watch. But in the end, she shows us how Haru finds her way back to the music, which is the only way she can move into the future, one note, and one dance step, at a time. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/09/25/ha-chan-shake-your-booty-review/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/09/25/ha-chan-shake-your-booty-review/"},"headline":"In Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, Dance and Desire Are Remedies for Grief","datePublished":"2026-09-25T19:41:28.591Z","dateModified":"2026-09-25T19:41:28.834Z","description":"Rinko Kikuchi stars as a widow learning to face the music, and the world, after death stopped her in her tracks.","url":"https://time.com/article/2026/09/25/ha-chan-shake-your-booty-review/","keywords":["movies","culturepod","review"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt101336f59879259c/6ab6bc6e44523f9a22b92ba3/hcsyb4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephanie Zacharek","jobTitle":"Film Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt101336f59879259c/6ab6bc6e44523f9a22b92ba3/hcsyb4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"hcsyb4.jpg","caption":"","creditText":"Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/09/25/ha-chan-shake-your-booty-review/","name":"In Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, Dance and Desire Are Remedies for Grief"}}]}] ```