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Save
the Last Dance
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Release
Date: March 30th 2001
Distributor: UIP
Certificate: 12
Starring: Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick
Thomas, Kerry Washington, Fredro Starr, Terry Kinney, Bianca Lawson
Director: Thomas
Carter
Running Time:
112 mins
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Two
different worlds, two different cultures, one passion: dance.
With echoes of 'Dirty Dancing' and 'Saturday Night Fever', Save the Last
Dance is a story of clashes - cultural, ethnic and artistic...
Sara (Julia Stiles) is a white, middle-class 17 year-old from small-town
America. As the film starts we learn that her dreams of becoming a ballet
dancer, and studying at Julliard, have been shattered. Sara's mother was
killed in a car-crash on her way to watch her daughters audition. |
Filled
with grief and abandoning all her dancing hopes, Sara goes to live with
her long-absent father (Terry Kinney), a jazz musician, in Chicago's gritty
South-Side. Struggling to get over her mothers death, Sara is befriended
at her new school (which has enough white pupils to fill one canteen table)
by Chenille (Kerry Washington), a black, unwed, teenage mother.
Chenille teaches Sara about life in the new city and takes her to a club
where she dances with the sexy, smart guy she's already noticed at school
- Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas) - who turns out to be Chenille's brother.
Derek is handsome and gifted and they dance together all night. Dance leads
to romance as Derek teaches Sara about hip-hop and persuades her to re-try
for her audition… but will their differences get in the way? |
| This
isn't your usual, run of the mill, racial tension story: yes, Derek at first
has a chip on his shoulder about Sara being white; and yes, Sara's father
has difficulty accepting her relationship with a black classmate, but Save
The Last Dance strikes just the right balance. Predominantly a romance -
we do see how they have to defend their relationship and how it could, in
theory, damage Sara's rediscovery of her dreams and Derek's hopes for a
better life, away from Chicago. Not only is Sara's father un-understanding
- so too are the other girls at school, and Derek's manipulative best friend
Malakai (Fredro Starr). Their choices that they make may surprise you… |
Sara
thinks everyone is living in the same world, but we know different. This
is a well crafted film; with wishful thinking and aspiratations overcoming
adversity and racism, with honest emotion and intelligence.
Jo Shilton |
