[HanCinema's Film Review] "Let's Dance"

The winner of this year's Grand Prize at the DMZDocs Film Festival, "Let's Dance" puts women on screen who have had abortions and lets them tell their stories. There's no sense of politics or ideology behind the documentary's construction. The interviews are framed around an incident regarding the legal status of abortions in South Korea circa 2009, but director Jo Se-young wisely avoids making this the essential part of the documentary's focus, instead just letting the women speak for themselves.

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Abortion is stigmatized in Korean society, but rather than try to blame the extant culture for these women's experiences, the interviews beg the question of whether or not this is just an inherent part of the human condition. Most of the women in this movie became pregnant unintentionally basically because they were young and stupid. The premarital sex described in this movie is a far cry from the sort of empowerment commonly described in feminist rhetoric. Almost all of the women straight up admit that once they got in the habit, they continued having sex because it just felt good.

Pregnancy, in this sense, becomes a wake-up call. It begs the question of what they're doing with their lives. The boyfriends of the women in this movie run a wide gamut. Loving men who eventually became husbands, clueless young guys, and jerks all comprise this group. By not trying to pigeonhole or marginalize the impact men had, "Let's Dance" excellently describes the collaborative nature of the acts that eventually led to the necessity of abortion- even if the consequences, ultimately, fell rather disproportionately to one side.

It's an inherent biological inequality for which there aren't any easy emotional answers. At multiple points the documentary veers very close to the scenarios often described politically- the unsupportive boyfriend, begging for money to keep the parents from finding out, the doctor who warns about long-term consequences. But whereas in politics these situations are typically described in decisive morally unambiguous terms, "Let's Dance" depicts the reality of how a normal woman is affected by these events personally. There aren't any real misogynist villains here- the question ends up becoming a larger one of how much information should be shared, and to whom.

The documentary, simply by existing, clearly comes out on the side of this sharing to be a good thing. And yet at the same time it's not really a solution to anything except the people immediately involved. It's comforting for a young woman to know that she's not alone in stressing over the prospect of an abortion. Regardless, as the closing shot so sadly demonstrates, no amount of information or acceptance can save a woman from the emotional aftermath. She can make peace with her choice, certainly- but that is a journey she will ultimately have to walk alone.

The greatest strength to "Let's Dance" is just how relatable it is. Because the film lacks any clear political agenda, it disassociates abortion from the extremely abstract moral and legal debate the issue always seems stuck in and helps the audience to empathize with these women, not as political entities, but as persons. It's from this context that we see, when ideology does come into the conversation, just how hopelessly naive the concept is. No group of people will ever be idealized enough to warrant these kinds of generalizations- not when such groups by necessity must be made up of individuals like the ones we see here.

This review was written by William Schwartz as a part of HanCinema's DMZDocs (DMZ Korean International Documentary Film Festival) coverage.

"Let's Dance" is directed by Jo Se-young