The Coach: 40 Year-Old Figure Skater (2010) User Reviews

Great Photography and Skating, but Jumpy and Hard to Follow

[tabuno · 7/10 · 21 January 2018]

Miwa, a 40-year old woman, a figure skating teacher, faces challenging choices about her professional future as well as encountering a young girl, whose father comes from a past relationship. Technical problems with the Amazon subtitles made watching this movie without prejudice difficult. However, the film's own editing seemed choppy and somewhat disjointed making the ability to comprehend what was going on more tedious and distracting while trying to just enjoy the film experience. There is also perhaps some cultural issues that arose with the challenge of the legal relationship between mother and the child as well as the professional career choices that arise in the movie. There's a personal choice dilemma from the past between individual happiness and Olympic aspirations, relationships, and confronting the present choices of parenting and the Olympics. Compared to The Cutting Edge (1992) , there's a focus in Coach on a paternal as well as handling multiple responsibilities and roles and might be considered at odds with American values. In contrast there is even a comparison could make with the boxing classic Rocky (1976) as well as a martial art and even a blue rose element. Or contrast Coach with No Reservations (2007) about a female chef confronted with a young child in a romantic comedy and how the relationship evolves and how it folds into the story. As a result, rating this movie becomes unusually somewhat subjected a cultural perspective. Additionally, there are small scenes that don't seem to fit, such as one of Miwa's older male students is informed that she needs to take some time off from her teaching but at this point in the movie one would assume that the student would be quite aware of the reason why. Even the motivation for Miwa's decisions seems to be given short shrift. There are occasionally some great, brief intimate elements, especially as they relate to family relationships. Additionally, the movie includes some nice film time on actual skating without apparent stunt doubles which is quite a refreshing and a challenging change. Overall, however, this movie just seems overly and unnecessarily difficult to follow in this presentation even as the movie's cinematography and performances are executed with icy and great technical precision.