'Dance With Me'
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Last week, "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" brought us a heroine in the form of a 40-year-old single mother who went searching for happiness in Jamaica and found it in the arms (and other adjacent body parts) of a man 20 years her junior.
This week, we are introduced to Ruby (Vanessa L. Williams), yet another sour single mom in need of an emotional tuneup. In the affable romantic fantasia "Dance With Me," Williams plays a Houston dance instructor and onetime competitive ballroom champion whose leotards snap to attention at the arrival of a handsome Cuban handyman on the doorstep of her employer, the seedy Excelsior Dance Studio.
As Rafael Infante, Puerto Rican pop singer Chayanne brings to the role of the Latin himbo immense likability not to mention deep dimples and a mouthful of ice cream-white choppers that he flashes at the camera at every opportunity.
Unlike "Stella's" May-September romance, though, "Dance" doesn't get into the ugly business of Rafael's and Ruby's ages. They're meant to be taken roughly as contemporaries here, although it is still a bit naughty to contemplate the fact that Williams just turned 35 this year and Chayanne is only 29. (You go, girl!)
Anyway, it seems that Rafael can fix more than loose floorboards. After restoring to mint condition the vintage truck belonging to his boss, Excelsior owner John Burnett (played by the wizened death's-head of Kris Kristofferson), Rafael sets about tinkering with Ruby's own rusty engine, which has been misfiring ever since her nasty old lover and dance partner Julian (Rick Valenzuela) knocked her up, then abandoned her.
Unlike the ulterior motives behind Rafael's mysterious dealings with Burnett who, it turns out, knew Rafael's mother years ago and may be more than avuncular to the young man Rafael's feelings toward Ruby are pure. He really likes her, gets along with her kid (Chaz Oswill), too, and even manages to teach the teacher a thing or two about dancing. Lacking Ruby's formal training, though, Rafael does not know a quickstep from a paso doble, but, as he tells her, "I'm from Cuba. Of course I know how to dance."
It seems his radical notion is this: Move to the music instead of following a prescribed set of steps. (Director Randa Haines and writer Daryl Matthews may have hidden a moral in there somewhere, but I can't be sure.)
The film's main action picks up speed as the staff and student body of Excelsior prepare for the 22nd Annual World Open Dance Championships in Las Vegas, where Ruby has foolishly agreed to reunite with the terpsichorean fascist Julian, and Rafael has been recruited as a last-minute partner to ambitious studio-mate Patricia (Jane Krakowski).
Will Ruby ever realize that the heart can't be choreographed and that improvised "arm stylings" are as valuable as the all-important ball-change maneuver?
This is where "Dance With Me" really begins to move, not only as a story, but pictorially as well. Whenever the contestants (many of whom are played by professional ballroom dancers) start to rumba and cha-cha, Haines's camera suddenly becomes more fluid and loose, gliding around and among the couples on the floor like another hoofer. What the director clearly understands is that it's no fun to merely watch other people shake their tail feathers unless we can be made to believe we're grooving to the music too.
It's a magic formula that has worked from Fred Astaire to "Flashdance" and, when done right (as it is here), it's filmmaking that can make even a wallflower feel like waltzing.
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