21-year old Kyoko journeys to New York to visit Jose, who taught her the joy of Latin dance as a young girl. She discovers that Jose is terminally ill and unable to remember her. So begins their extraordinary journey together Format: Color, DVD, NTSC. Language: English. Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.). Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1. Number of discs: 1. Rated: R (Restricted). Studio: New Concorde. DVD Release Date: July 18, 2000. Run Time: 85 minutes.

Directed by: Ryu Murakami

Written by: Ryu Murakami

Miyako Ejiri, Ryu Murakami

Actors: Saki Takaoka, Carlos Osorio ("Sexo con Amor")

Year: 2000

Average Customer Review: ( 5 customer reviews )
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Most 14 year olds could not pull those moves off. You simply MUST see this dance scene! I will be purchasing the movie with this scene in mind.

1 of 1 found the following review helpful:

Ryu Murakami can do anything. Including make movies.Aug 10, 2007
By Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal"
Because of You (Ryu Murakami, 1995)

There's a point you will come to when you're watching Because of You where you will realize that you've seen this movie before. And not just once, a thousand times. This is not a movie where originality of plot ranks high in the reasons why you would want to view it again. Hopefully, however, by the time you reach that point, you won't care.

Ryu Murakami is probably better-known as an author than as a film director in America (he wrote the novel Odishion, turned into the infamous 1999 Takashi Miike film of the same name), but he does excellent work in both fields. His refined sense of the absurd carries over quite nicely onto celluloid, and it's one of the things that separates this flick from the pack. It's the story of Kyoko (Crest of Betrayal's Saki Takaoka, who won a Best Acrtress award at Mainichi's Film Concours for her performance here), a twenty-one-year-old Japanese woman who comes to New York looking for her friend Jose (Carlos Osorio). Jose, stationed in Japan while in the army nine years earlier, had taught Kyoko to dance, and told her to come to New York to see him once she grew up. She gets there and, after a series of misadventures, locates Jose, who is suffering from AIDS-related dementia and remembers nothing about her. In an impulsive act of kindness, she offers to drive him from New York to Miami to be with his family in his final days, not realizing the danger that a young Japanese woman and a Cuban with AIDS will face in the deep South. Despite (or, perhaps, because of) her naivete, however, she finds no shortage of people willing to help her achieve her goal, even those who originally intend her and her passenger harm.

Yeah, it's pretty predictable, and let's face it, it helps that Saki Takaoka is smoking hot, especially when she's dancing (and Murakami, realizing this, gives her plenty of opportunity to dance. The Rumba in the bar should have ended with every male there flinging themselves at her feet). But there's more to this movie than just your basic morality play about trusting the good in everyone you meet. Both Takaoka and Osorio are very good, and the supporting cast also does a fine job. Murakami, while not doing nearly as much as he could have with the material (expanding this eighty-five-minute film would have been a breeze), keeps things compact and on-point, preferring to allow emotional buildup through the characters to making the plot more byzantine. As a result, the movie is better looked at as a study of these two characters realized through their absurd journey, and thus the two characters themselves are the focal point of the movie; it works if they work. And they do work. Despite some stereotyping for dramatic effect (it would be a major spoiler to reveal what I'm talking about, but you'll know it when you see it), both Kyoko and Jose are deeply-felt, well-rounded characters. You may never get to identify with them, but you should at least get to like them well enough that the movie packs the emotional punch it's meant to. I liked this movie very much, and recommend it without hesitation. ****


Kyoko (Because of You)Aug 28, 2009
By Cristian Lefter
If you make a passion from Latin dances, you may like this movie. Personally I liked the dancing scenes a lot (specially the rumba dancing - real rumba danced by Felix 'Pupy' Insua). However, I did not rate it with a five star because the flow of the movie can be improved (the scenes look more like the acts of a play rather than a continuous action).
There is also an AIDS drama however, life, death, sadness and joy have in this movie a common denominator - dancing.