Beatrice

The concept suggested by film trailer is two rival professional dancers falling for each other through teaching each other their respective dance genre specialties, but that's not what it delivers. The film is the most fascinating when exploring the psychology and athleticism of competitive dancers like when Suguki poses Suzuki in the female dancer positions to illustrate the grueling pain of dancing for hours and hours in heels in order to make him understand he needs to be supportive while leading his dance partner and the chilling scene where Suguki who everyone admires as the dancing gentleman cruelly puppets his near catatonic from ptsd shock dance partner by shouting instructions to get her through the competition. The movie fails to deliver on romantic tension or any feelings of yearning and longing outside of Suguki's yearning to finally be champion. Although Suguki is the one that initiates them working together and later to make out on the train, he never shows any kind of attraction or feeling for Suzuki aside from the flashback where it's revealed that he cried from the overwhelming feeling of inspiration when he first saw Suzuki dance. Suguki only loves dancing, he doesn't really care about any human being for themselves. Even his ex girlfriend that left him for another dancer, he just really liked how she danced with him. In the end he embraces his love of dancing for the sake of dancing rather than to be champion where he's not favored by the judges for whatever arbitrary reason by the slimmest margins though he's obviously at the top of the game, with Suzuki that he enjoys dancing with. Like how in Challengers everything is about tennis and tennis is about sex, here everything is about dance and dance is the sex. If this was how it was advertised, then perhaps it would be less disappointing in the romance department.