Save the Last Dance

Save the Last Dance is a sober and credible youth and dance film which may hold all the right opinions, but they are served up without bombastic moralising. The film also avoids the stereotypes found in most youth films.

Teenager Sara dreams of being accepted at the renowned Juilliard ballet school, but she shelves the dream when her mother dies in a road accident on the way to Sara's audition. Sara moves in with her father in the deprived, predominantly black neighbourhood of South Chicago. Here she gets to know Derek. He introduces her to hip hop, a completely different musical culture, and at the same time he helps breathe life into her dream again. Sara and Derek's friendship develops into a harmonious love affair, but they meet resistance from those around them. A white girl should not think she can run off with one of the few young black men who actually have a future ahead of them. It becomes too much for Sara, who breaks up with Derek, accepting that a mixed-race relationship creates too many insurmountable problems.

Save the Last Dance dares to tackle the problems of the poor black inner-city ghettos and to show the difficulties in a relationship between a black person and a white person. It all comes together at the end., where the dance can be seen as a union of black and white forms of dance expression, classical ballet and hip-hop.