I usually don’t review actual films on this website, unless they are animation or anime of some kind. However, I have a pretty nice deal with Media Lab Public Relations and I got a screener for this one. I was curious because I announced it was now streaming on Darkroom, and I wanted to see if it was worth checking out.

Young women in a small Japanese town look to revive their home’s declining fortunes by building a Hawaiian village tourist attraction.

—Darkroom.film

The setting is the small coal mine town of Iwaki in Fukushima Prefecture. The story takes place in 1965, and everybody in Iwaki has always known coal, coal, coal. However, the mine is laying off 2000 workers (it’s essentially dying along with the town), while at the same time, a proposition to build a tourist attraction centered around Hawaii and the local hot springs is coming into play. This is a wildly unpopular idea. The women who are initially recruited to learn hula dancing leave the information session, saying stuff like, “I’m not shaking my butt like that!” or claiming that they’re nearly naked and like strippers.

However, two teenaged girls, Sanae and Kimiko, are dazzled by not only hula, but the new dance instructor in town all the way from Tokyo, Madoka Hirayama, and promise each other that they will work hard to participate. Their families have something different to say about it–at one point, when Sanae’s father walks in on her hula dancing in costume for her siblings, he loses it and beats her bloody. Kimiko’s own mother slaps her and kicks her out of the house, even as Kimiko shouts, “Women can do anything now!”

The town of Iwaki is buried in the past and very, very closeminded. When I watched these scenes, I thought to myself, why was this marketed as a comedy? It’s a drama! Sure, there are a few cute scenes here and there, but overall everything is played very seriously and the scenes are nothing to sniff at. It’s all very emotional and dramatic.

Eventually more women change their minds and join the initial four members of the dancing troupe, and Hirayama-sensei works her magic all the while battling demons of her own.

I enjoyed myself watching this movie but wasn’t expecting to get teary eyed at parts of it, especially at the end. I’m not going to blow the rest of the plot for you, but I will say that once the girls get what they’re doing, they’re unstoppable and give great performances.

It makes me wonder if hula is popular all over Japan. When I moved to Kikuchi in 2016 for the White Dragon Festival, they had hula dancers, but I missed their performance. I wonder if it would’ve looked like the great dancing in this film.

Anyway, this film was a pleasant surprise in that it was so enjoyable to watch, and that it was not so much a comedy, but a drama with cute scenes here and there. Just be aware that you might not laugh so much, but instead feel quite an array of emotions as you witness these courageous girls try to break the gloom over their small hometown.

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Hula Girls (2006) is directed by Sang-il Lee and is currently available for streaming from Darkroom. Watch the movie here.