SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Haru and Luis are the kind of couple who banter as they chop and cook, sharing old jokes in English, Spanish and Japanese over a Mexican-accented Japanese dinner, as they watch videos of themselves dancing. It turns out they're contestants in the Tokyo Dance Classic. But Luis falls to the floor, gasping.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!")
RINKO KIKUCHI: (As Haru) Luis, what's wrong? Luis, can you hear me? Luis, look at me.
SIMON: It's an engaging and then terrifying opening to the new film "Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!"
SIMON: It stars Rinko Kikuchi and Alejandro Edda. It has nods to "Grease," "Dirty Dancing," "Footloose" and more. It is directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka, who's directed episodes of AMC's "The Terror" and "Fear The Walking Dead" and the feature "Catch The Fair One." He joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA: Hi, Scott. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure and honor.
SIMON: You know, I was just looking forward to a movie starring this utterly engaging couple when you take him away.
WLADYKA: (Laughter) Yeah. I'm sorry. I know. We ripped the rug out from under you.
SIMON: Well...
WLADYKA: But he comes back. He's still looming around a little bit.
SIMON: Yes, he does. And I don't want to give too much away. The mix of cultures - mostly understanding of each other, but there's a real difference between what to do with Luis' remains, aren't there?
WLADYKA: Yeah. And that's very much the catalyst of the film in a lot of ways. Haru's character wants to do a kotsuage, which is a ceremony where you burn the family remains. And his family comes from Mexico, and they want to take the body back to be buried. So it's sort of a launching-off point for the journey of grief, of what the character Haru is going to go through in the film.
SIMON: And help us understand what I'll refer to as the size of Haru's grief. There's a huge bird who begins to appear.
WLADYKA: (Laughter) That's correct. So, yeah, we wanted to create some sort of manifestation of the spirit of Luis still looming in their home, in their nest. We wanted to take, like, a universal symbol that represents grief and death in a crow but also combine it with the yuru-kyara cute Japanese mascot culture to have it sort of be a little bit more softer and a little bit more soothing for Haru to embrace as she starts the journey of dealing with her grief.
SIMON: I can see why Haru wouldn't want to go on a dance floor ever again. Why do her sister and cousin - both great characters, by the way - why do they push her?
WLADYKA: Because she's become a little bit of recluse. She's just moping in her house (laughter), talking to maybe a spirit that is there or isn't there. It's a big part of what the idea behind the movie is, is that life is messy and tragedy happens to us. But at some point, you have to get up and you have to start moving again, and you have to start dancing again. And dance is a great way to move through grief. And, you know, the film is sort of an homage to the spirit of my mother. It's a film that it is very much a celebration of her. It's not biographical, but she's a ballroom dancer. She's 82, and she's still competing now. And her motto that she would always tell me and my brothers is, no matter how life gets, you should never stop moving forward, never stop dancing.
SIMON: Yeah. What does ballroom dancing give to Haru and, for that matter, how you've observed it in the life of your mother?
WLADYKA: Oh, I mean, it's given her everything. I'm the youngest of three sons. My mom was a single mother raising us. And, you know, she went through some hard times, and the one consistency in her life that she always did to kind of help deal with everything was dancing. And, you know, she would always tell me that it kind of saved her life in a lot of ways. And so ballroom is so important to her, and in the film, the character, Haru - it's, you know, her passion. It's her way of expressing herself. You know, the different dance sequences in the film, the different types of dance are all little narratives and stories that you tell within the routine.
SIMON: Yeah. May I ask you a little bit about your family?
WLADYKA: Sure. Of course. Yep.
SIMON: It's what we would, I guess, call cross-cultural, right?
WLADYKA: Yes (laughter). My mother is from Japan, and my father is from Poland. They met in Washington, D.C. That's where I was raised, in the Washington D.C. area, in Virginia. It was a complicated relationship, so my mom kind of had to work and raise three boys on her own. But we grew up in a house where it was two different cultures existing. Both my parents loved films, though, so that was a beautiful thing that we got from both of them. So yeah. I was - I'm grateful that I had this sort of two different cultural backgrounds growing up from my family, but also a love of film because it's really the main reason why I'm a filmmaker.
SIMON: Has your mother seen the film?
WLADYKA: Yes. Yes. She has. She was at the Sundance premiere. She got a standing ovation. And then we just played at the Toronto International Film Festival, and she got another standing ovation. So she's loving it.
SIMON: But may I ask, did she say - as only a mother can - it's brilliant, honey, but...
WLADYKA: (Laughter) Yes. Well, she's a ballroom dancer, and, you know, none of the actors were professional ballroom dancers, you know.
SIMON: Yeah.
WLADYKA: They had to train, and, you know, it takes years to actually be able to really do it. So I would say she can be critical about the dancing, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: Hell, the film's dedicated to her. She's entitled.
WLADYKA: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SIMON: Oh, that's wonderful. Let's just say Haru returns to dance class. She meets Fedir, her dance teacher. Let me just put it this way. Not since Patrick Swayze first hit the screen - is that a good way of putting it?
WLADYKA: (Laughter) Yes. She meets Fedir, who is played by the amazing, amazing Alberto Guerra. And as sometimes happens in life, you know, lightning can strike, and you can form an infatuation with someone, but you're still struggling and holding on to other parts of your life, and you're going through grief, and you're thrashing. So it can be confusing. It can be exciting. That's like the linchpin moment that changes a lot of the trajectory of the film.
SIMON: Yeah. We are very lucky to catch you relatively early in your career. What would you like to bring to film?
WLADYKA: You know, this is my third feature film, and obviously, I've done a lot of television directing, so I feel like I've been cutting my teeth for a long time. But from my films, I just want to keep trying to find interesting stories, films that are very, very original that you wouldn't see normally. I'm an independent filmmaker at heart. And so my films - they're these chapters of my life, and they kind of all bleed into each other, and it's really interesting. They really do become your children, in a way (laughter).
So moving forward, you know, I just want to keep trying to listen to my instinct and take big swings and make films that maybe we don't necessarily see, but I feel like it's just something that we really need right now, you know? So you might have some hits. You might have some misses, but I think the goal is to just keep trying to create.
SIMON: Josef Kubota Wladyka. His new film is "Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!" And you sure will.
WLADYKA: (Laughter).
SIMON: Thanks so much for being with us.
WLADYKA: Thank you so much, Scott. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF CEDRIC KING PALMER'S "SEDUCTIVE BOLERO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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