The Last Dance

A successful Japanese director in his sixties grows steadily more ill while making his latest film. His family, his friends and his doctor try to keep from him that his cancer is terminal. Buhei works out the truth of his condition all the same, step by step. What follows is a road running between despair, anger and, in the end, acceptance. The film does not shut a dying man inside a hospital room; it keeps him someone who still wants to make films. It also puts on trial the custom of hiding an illness from the patient. Comedy and weight stand side by side inside the same scenes. Rentaro Mikuni and Nobuko Miyamoto appear in Jūzō Itami’s hundred and sixteen minute Japanese film, completed in 1993.