‘Save the Last Dance’ Toes a Fine Emotional Line

When we meet Julia Stiles’ Sara in the skillfully made heart-tugger “Save the Last Dance,” she’s a small-town, 17-year-old ballet student anxiously awaiting her Juilliard audition. Her mother, a busy florist, in rushing to be with her daughter at this all-important occasion, is killed in a car crash.

By the time the opening credits are over, Sara is on her way to Chicago to live with her father, Roy (Terry Kinney), a jazz trumpeter she barely knows. Instead of a large turn-of-the century house in a Norman Rockwell town, home is now a crummy walk-up apartment. When she enrolls in an inner-city high school, she swiftly discovers there are just enough white students to fill up a cafeteria table.

Benumbed by her mother’s death and having given up her dream of dancing, Sara is barely responsive to her radically new environment. Yet the moment she sets down her satchel by her new locker, a pretty and vivacious black student, Chenille (Kerry Washington), kindly warns her never to let loose of any possessions and thereby extends to Sara her friendship.

In short order, Sara meets Chenille’s brother Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), who initially has a chip on his shoulder because she’s white. However, as they are both very bright and self-possessed young people, they are inevitably drawn to each other, first on a club dance floor, where Sara swiftly discovers toe-dancing is not much help in mastering the moves required by hip-hop music. Derek is just the fellow to come to her rescue.

In time, he comes to her aid in a much bigger way, gently yet forcefully getting her to deal with her guilt over her mother’s death and encouraging her to rekindle her dream of trying out for Juilliard. He’ll help her get in shape and also coach her in the free-form portion of the audition.

To be sure, dance is very important in this movie, but as in “Saturday Night Fever” and “Dirty Dancing,” it is a way of entering the lives of its characters and their dreams. Written by Duane Adler and Cheryl Edwards and directed by Thomas Carter, the film evolves into a teen romance that generates enough honest emotion to play against the predictability of its finish. The story comes full circle in a way that might seem overly schematic did it not have the courage to wear its heart on its sleeve without losing its head.

Where “Save the Last Dance” develops some edge is in the way it suggests that while Derek’s impact upon Sara is entirely positive, her impact upon him proves more problematic. Derek is awaiting word on a premed scholarship to Georgetown but is vulnerable to his loyalty to his longtime friend Malakai (Fredro Starr), who’s dealing drugs and caught up in gang warfare. Sara does not yet fully comprehend that she unwittingly could just as easily influence Derek negatively as positively--just as she does not realize that African American girls might resent her capturing the heart of a young black man so full of promise when so many of his peers, like Malakai, have already given into despair and embarked on lives of crime.

In her naivete, Sara sees everyone living in the same world, only to be caught short by Chenille’s bitter remark, “We know different.” To their credit, the filmmakers emphasize how individuals like Derek and Chenille are striving to overcome adversity and racism to make better lives for themselves instead of resorting to the movies’ usual exploitation of hooker sex and street violence to depict life in black neighborhoods. In regard to the latter, Malakai represents danger and potential tragedy, not glamour.

Well-crafted and smoothly paced, “Save the Last Dance” benefits most strongly from its predominantly youthful cast, which includes the striking Bianca Lawson as the gorgeous Nikki, Sara’s rival for Derek’s affections. Lawson and the most appealing Washington make impressions as vivid as those of Stiles and Thomas. Melodrama, wishful thinking and grit strike just the right balance in “Save the Last Dance” to make it work.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for violence, sexual content, language and brief drug reference. Times guidelines: suitable for teenagers but too intense for small children.

‘Save the Last Dance’

Julia Stiles: Sara

Sean Patrick Thomas: Derek

Kerry Washington: Chenille

Fredro Starr: Malakai

Terry Kinney: Roy

A Paramount Pictures presentation in association with MTV Films. Director Thomas Carter. Producer Robert W. Cort and Dave Madden. Screenplay by Duane Adler and Cheryl Edwards, story by Adler. Cinematographer Robbie Greenberg. Editor Peter E. Berger. Music Mark Isham. Costumes Sandra Hernandez. Production designer Paul Eads. Art director Diane Hughes. Set decorator Patricia Schneider. Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes.