The Skinny
GFF 2021: Dreams on Fire
Dance movie Dreams on Fire occasionally trades in clichés but thrives when working as an unapologetic examination of trying to make it in a precarious industry
★★★
Film title:
Dreams on Fire
Director:
Philippe McKie
Following in the perfectly choreographed footsteps of such films as
Step Up and
Save the Last Dance,
Dreams on Fire centres on Yume (Bambi Nake), a young Japanese woman who escapes her fraught, provincial family life to throw herself headlong into Tokyo’s underground dance scene – whatever the odds.
This is well-trodden cinematic ground, and
Dreams on Fire at times fails to stake its claim within a crowded genre. The script occasionally trades in clichés (“You never believed in me,” shouts Yume tearfully at her grandfather), while the initially electrifying dance scenes lose impact towards the film’s more unfocused middle. Yet where