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Innocent Steps caught me not by the dances, but the portrait of how the tour guide from Mainland China touring around Seoul, South Korea. It was so hilarious that I couldn't stop laughing, but after the laughter I know it was not exaggerating, a lot of these Chinese tourist have already brought disgrace to Chinese people all over the world. I felt not offended but ashamed.
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The story was about a Chinese girl who doesn't know dancing at all, and a Dancesport Trainer who was once the best in South Korea but now a cripple, got trapped by a dance rival to a fraud marriage bonded by intensive dance training in which both developed true affection, but it turned out that the devil rival manipulated to pick the well-trained girl and won the Nationals. This was the best I could do in a sentence.
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Plot is just fine, with expected result, but it doesn't make it no longer entertaining. I would say this is a romance file sprinkled with dance scenes. As a dance addict I should have said there's too little dancing; as a dance freak, I should say lucky that there's not many dance scenes so I did not have to watch terrible dancing for long. Moon Seung-young danced the Samba so uglily.
Several notes I jotted down for Innocent Steps:
Acting: I don't see any acting, facial expressions limited- plus that I personally do not think that Moon is a beauty, I especially hate her frowning all the time. Never see the personality as 'cheerful' and 'cute' as described by the other characters.
Dance related details:
First and foremost, I HATE it when people think that a newbie can win a champ within 3 months, no matter how hard working she could be during the three months, and even just in a movie I could not except that, because I feel they are depriving of the real dancer's harsh training. It is not hard to get oneself on the dance floor, but it sure very hard for one to become a champion. You may be able to train one's physique in a few months, but you can never train one's musicianship, musicality, expressing, coordinating, and you sure can't train one's connections, connection with a partner, connection with the floor, connection within oneself... I hate it when the champ result was revealed and that this newbie girl was the winner. This is just so ridiculous.
Secondly, I despise the very unladylike posture of Moon throughout the movie! Come on, a professional dancer can never give such a pose- crouching the back all the time, ducking the head all the time and showing no confidence at all the time. And how can you train someone with suchlike self-esteem to be a magnificent professional dancer? Just impossible. But in the film, they did it, what a miracle!
Oh oh oh, it comes to the dance technique... usually I am not demanding on actors and actresses who are not dances themselves. It is not their fault not to look like a dancer if they do not dance at all. However, I do believe it should be handled during the making of a dance movie. Recently I have finished reading a book titled 'Dancefilm' focusing on how dance scenes should be handled for movies when no star is a dancer. There could be a lot of camera work to do to eliminate the bad feet, ugly hip actions, wrong dance patterns, but those would he worth when the final product shines. This movie just did not manage to have the perfect angles of filming.
It was really a disaster when I could clearly see Moon bouncing the circular Volta, if this was about normal people learning dancing it would be fine, but when I saw those other competitors were all much nicer than Moon, how could I be convinced?
Alright, not all audience is a dancer, but they all have some common sense, right? To integrate the Grand Allegro into the Samba? Absolutely absurd. We really care for our feet and body so only Swing-ing like Rock n Roll-ing or Boogie Woogie-ing when I wear flat sole swing shoes I would do aerial. Besides, competition rules do not allow that. I agree that 'if you limit your mind, you shouldn't dance', but you have to see if the style fits he reality. When you only aim to impress, you achieve the opposite. Latin Dance focus on the emotions and the connections between partners and within one's body.
And the last bit, she didn't do any Latin Dance makeup in the so-called professional dance competition. She looked like a K-pop star, not a professional dancer. Of course she is amateur with three month dancing experience, but in the story she was not entering a Pro-Am but a Pro competition. (Or maybe the translation was not correct so I got the wrong idea?) OMG, why can the film maker do some research before the filming?