Grief can take some unexpected forms. In Josef Kubota Wladyka’s “Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!,” it looks like Rinko Kikuchi with a tightly curled perm, blue eye shadow, a septum ring and a ballroom dress covered in feathers. She dances. She flirts. She gets jealous. At one point, her grief literally follows her around in the form of an enormous, strangely adorable crow. Nearly 20 years after Kikuchi earned an Oscar nomination for “Babel,” it’s hard to remember seeing her play anyone like Ha-chan.
The imagination of Wladyka’s film is easy to get swept up in. It moves between Japanese, English and Spanish and finds Ha-chan navigating Japanese and Mexican traditions while the film itself slips freely from romance and comedy into dance and fantasy. Underneath all that color and movement, Ha-chan is simply a woman trying to figure out what her life looks like after losing the person she expected to share it with.
Kikuchi plays Haru, known as Ha-chan, a Japanese ballroom dancer whose Mexican husband and dance partner Luis (Alejandro Edda) dies, leaving her unmoored from the life they built together. When she eventually returns to dancing, she starts developing feelings for a new instructor, Fedir (Alberto Guerra). Kikuchi can be funny and awkward in one scene, then surprisingly sexual or a little unhinged in the next. It’s the kind of uninhibited role rarely handed to a middle-aged Japanese woman on screen. Ha-chan desperately misses her husband while finding herself attracted to someone new, and the film doesn’t ask her to feel guilty about either.
The performance has helped make “Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!” a festival favorite. The film premiered at Sundance, where Wladyka won the U.S. Dramatic Directing Award, before continuing its run at TIFF. Kikuchi has also begun turning up in the early awards conversation, with some critics raising the possibility of her returning to the Oscars 20 years after “Babel” earned her a Best Supporting Actress nomination. Yet Ha-chan hardly feels designed as an awards showcase. Some of Kikuchi’s best moments are also her strangest and funniest.
Much of what makes Ha-chan so specific comes from Wladyka’s own life. The Japanese and Polish American filmmaker based her curly perm, vibrant makeup and elaborate competition dresses directly on his mother, a ballroom dancer who raised three sons and still competes at 81. He had also watched his mother use dance to get through difficult periods in her own life. That personal connection helps explain why the dance sequences feel like more than an excuse to put on a show.
Kikuchi describes Ha-chan in more hopeful terms than tragic ones. “For me, Ha-chan is someone who lives kind of like the sun,” she told Awards Focus. “She’s very forward-looking and trying to make the best of the situation.” Ha-chan wants to dance again. She wants intimacy again. She wants to laugh again. None of that means she misses Luis any less.
Kikuchi mattered enough to Wladyka’s vision that he rewrote the character for her. The two had worked together on “Tokyo Vice,” where he says he was struck by her presence even in the smallest moments. Ha-chan was originally written as an older woman, but after pitching Kikuchi the film, Wladyka and co-writer Nicholas Huynh reshaped the role around her. “The movie is not the movie without her,” Wladyka says in the film’s production notes.
I spoke with Kikuchi while the film was screening at TIFF about playing a character unlike any she’d taken on before, learning ballroom dance and navigating the different Japanese and Mexican traditions around death that shape Ha-chan’s story. We also talked about her unconventional relationships and a final act that gets to the heart of what moved me about the film: figuring out how to let someone go without letting go of what they meant to you.
This interview was conducted with the assistance of a Japanese interpreter and has been edited for length and clarity.
Awards Focus: You’ve played such a wide range of characters, but I’ve never seen you play anyone quite like Ha-chan. What was it about this character that made you want to take on the role?
Rinko Kikuchi: First of all, I had collaborated with the director, Josef, on “Tokyo Vice,” and I knew that I wanted to work with him again. The role is based on his mother, so there’s an actual person, which was really interesting for me, to embody the spirit of his mom and the themes within the film.
Learning to heal her pain through dance was something that really attracted me. Having the crow was also interesting. It’s a very new type of role and script that I hadn’t been able to do before, so I felt it would be interesting to jump in. The theme of dealing with the loss of a partner was also something that I hadn’t really had to play before, so that was very interesting for me as well.
AF: Ha-chan is a very different kind of character. She’s in an interracial marriage, she’s a dancer, she has this incredible style, and she’s sexually explorative. We don’t often see Japanese women given this kind of freedom on screen. Was that part of what made the character exciting for you?
Kikuchi: Definitely. In Japanese dramas or films, you don’t see this kind of very strong female lead very often, which is something that drew me to her. Ha-chan is very strong, and how to portray that was a challenge for me and something I wanted to challenge myself to do.
In the film, she’s speaking English, she’s speaking Spanish, she’s dancing, she’s communicating with the crow. There’s so much to do, and that was something that motivated me. It’s also the kind of project that you can’t really define in a simple way. It crosses so many genres. It’s serious at one point, but it’s also a fantasy. I had never been lucky enough to have such an interesting mix in a script before, so that was really fulfilling for me as an actor.
AF: One of the themes introduced very early is how different cultures honor the dead, particularly through the conflict between Ha-chan and Luis’ father. Did exploring those different approaches to death make you think differently about how we honor the people we’ve lost?
Kikuchi: It really made me aware of the differences and also made me reexamine my own cultural norms. Obviously, in Japan, you would cremate people, and there’s this idea that through cremation maybe you would be able to see them again. I feel that Ha-chan thought that through the cremation, through burning the crow, she would be able to reunite with her husband.
Whereas in other countries, people tend to be buried. That wasn’t something that was foremost in my mind, but I was able to think about it. In Japan, death is also usually more connected to Buddhism, so I was able to reexamine and bring to mind those Japanese norms around death and that process.
AF: Dancing is such an important part of who Ha-chan is. How much training did you do for the role, and did the dancing help you understand her differently as a character?
Kikuchi: I spent maybe two or three months preparing for the dancing. Obviously, dance is one of the most important aspects of Ha-chan’s life, so I felt it was really important to understand her better through the lens of dance. I had to make sure I got that in order to portray Ha-chan well in the other aspects of the film.
I also wanted to give it that legitimacy, because she is a dancer. That’s her passion, and that’s something I really needed to embody in order to do that. I’m not really a method actor. It’s more like an on-and-off switch for me. But the dance aspect was very important to me in order to portray Ha-chan well because it’s so important to Ha-chan herself.
AF: There’s a wonderfully playful “Dirty Dancing” moment in the film. Was there ever a conversation about going all the way and recreating that iconic Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey lift?
Kikuchi: Yeah, we definitely discussed that iconic moment, and I was really riled up to do it because it is such a big thing. But there were discussions with Josef, and he wanted to do something different. So it ended up being more of a catch kind of thing.
AF: The film also explores open marriage and different kinds of relationships, which aren’t necessarily associated with traditional Japanese culture. Were you concerned about how Japanese audiences might respond to that part of the story?
Kikuchi: Definitely. Open marriage is not really a big thing in Japan yet. Also, even being comforted by the crow, when I read these things in the script, there was a little bit of worry, like, “What are people going to think?”
But when I actually saw the film, it didn’t feel that awkward to me. As a concept, there might be things that people are a little bit weirded out by, but in the context of the film, it just felt very natural to me. It was really sweet. Ha-chan really being into it because it’s a way for her to get what she wants seemed so sweet to me that it didn’t feel as dangerous or awkward or taboo as you might have thought just by talking about it.
AF: The film is ultimately about grief, but it’s also funny, fantastical, romantic and sexually playful. What have you heard from audiences or critics that has surprised you?
Kikuchi: It is definitely a very new type of role for me. There are so many elements of fantasy and dance. Is it about love? Is it about jealousy? When I read the script, it was just like there was so much going on.
But when you watch the film, it all comes together really well, and you can really see Ha-chan’s life and how she lives it. That’s something that really resonated with me, and I hope people will see that as well. For me, Ha-chan is someone who lives kind of like the sun. She’s very forward-looking and trying to make the best of the situation. Hopefully audiences will be able to relate to that as well.
AF: I’d love your interpretation of the scene near the end when the crow is set on fire. We know Luis wasn’t cremated. Did you see that as tying back to the earlier conversation about cremation and something Ha-chan needed in order to finally let Luis go?
Kikuchi: Yeah, I feel that it was a way for Ha-chan to let go. Again, we were talking about Buddhist ideas of cremation and going on to the next life. I think Ha-chan wanted to meet Luis again, even though it might not be possible in this life.
In this life, maybe she’ll be alone. Maybe she’ll find a new partner. But by cremating the crow and being able to ensure that she will see him again in another life, that was something very positive and forward-looking for her. It was a release rather than a sad moment. That’s how I interpreted that scene.
AF: In much of the third act, you’re performing under very elaborate makeup. How did you approach showing so much emotion when so much of your face was covered?
Kikuchi: I was really excited for the challenge of portraying all of that through the heavy makeup. I had to think about how to do that when everything was covered. It was definitely a challenge, but when you see it on screen, it’s very impactful. I realized that it could be something very artistic, where I could bring those inner feelings to the outside through that makeup.
I even feel like maybe it’s a little bit close to Noh, where you wear a mask. It’s the same mask and the face doesn’t change, but depending on the angle you look at it, you see a different emotion. I felt that the La Catrina makeup did something similar for me. So that challenge of expressing all these emotions through the same makeup was really fun for me.
AF: Thank you so much for your time. It was lovely talking with you, and congratulations on the film.
Kikuchi: Thank you so much.