The movie begins with Shinya Suzuki. He is a ladies' man, a laid-back yanki of a dancer. Half Cuban, half Japanese, he longs for his island home. He lives in a tropical enclave in Japan, but is outwardly uninterested in dancing on the international stage. For reasons he cannot identify, he finds himself constantly watching the dancing of a man with a similar name, Shinya Shigiki, an internationally renowned ballroom dancer who has never quite made it to the top.

These two men could not be more different. One Shinya lives a life of freedom, sensuality, and joy. The other is tightly wound, seeking elegant perfection and never quite finding it. The tension between them is immediate. They can't stop watching one another. As they start to train together, their buried emotions rise to the surface.

10 Dance, streaming on Netflix as of this writing, was a pretty entertaining movie. I'd been meaning to read the manga for years, but just never found time for it. So when I had the chance to watch this, I jumped on it. Right away, the tension between Ryōma Takeuchi's Shinya Suzuki and Keita Machida's Shinya Sugiki was very good. The scenes as they vie for dominance in dance were hot, in many ways hotter than when the dams between them break.

Both leads do a very good job in their roles, but if I had to vote, I'd give Takeuchi the win. He's aggressive, obnoxious, and challenging, but as their relationship changes, his complexity rises to the surface, with some viscerally complicated scenes. This is in part because Machida's character is much more tightly controlled and never truly lets go of that control.

I spent a lot of time watching how the men treated their female partners. Aki Yajima, played by Shiori Doi, was great. She's confident, positive, not at all fazed by Suzuki's lack of motivation, and solid on the dance floor. Anna Ishii's Fusako Ogami was problematic from the beginning. Ishii does a compelling and horrifying portrayal of a completely passive woman, someone who doesn't see herself at all, except as a reflection of her partner, Sugiki. Their backstory is marginally unpleasant on both sides, but is played for character development for his, rather than her, character. It wasn't anywhere at the level of fridging, but it left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

Like other Netflix adaptations I've watched recently, I very much enjoyed the internationality of the story. People are speaking Spanish in Suzuki's “Little Havana.” English is used as the narrative language of the ballroom dance scene. It gives the story a global glossiness that works.

I guess I need to talk about the dancing, don't I? I am not at all familiar with the specific techniques and rules of Latin or Ballroom dance, but I have decades of sports competitions behind me, of a dozen kinds, and a family who acted as timers, judges, and referees for all kinds of activities. Both Machida and Takeuchi did the very best job they could with the complicated athletics of dance, in what I imagine was a short time to practice. There was no perfection in any of the dances, but they did their best. It shows, especially in the finale, where the leads manage to pull off some convincing footwork. I wouldn't say that they look like they could be part of an international competition. But that is not why you are watching this story, or if it is, then stop and go watch championship videos or something, because this movie is not, despite the many dance scenes, about dance.

As BL goes, the tension between Machida and Takeuchi works best in those many dance scenes. When they move beyond dance to kissing, they both come off as playing “sexually ravenous” but also look like they don't want to commit, quite. In a more romantic story, I'd say that ruined the vibe—here it just confirms the finely balanced pressure between the two Shinyas. We don't want it to snap; they apparently don't either.

The end of the story comes with a pile of external complications that distract from the situationship between the leads, and it also comes with a welcome lightning in the women's lives. Yajima has a crisis of her own, but she and Ogami can just stand and watch and be happy for their partners as they have their final conversation doing the ten dances together on the dance floor, surrounded by an accepting crowd. It was a handwave, but not as unlikely as it seems. Same-sex ballroom dancing associations and competitions have been spreading steadily this decade. So we can just sit back and watch Machida and Takeuchi glide around the floor in five ballroom and five Latin dances and just accept it.

As adaptations go, this was enjoyable, slick, well-acted, and entertaining.