dancing scene looks funny and awkward

overall Ford is underrated by the critics!

I think you people are missing something about this one scene. It's the fact that Ford's charachter went to Paris to "repeat" his honey moon with his wife, whom he loved deeply and was immensely loyal to as we can understand. But then again he meets Emanuelle's charachter which is just heaven-sent and would make any sane straight man lose his mind at any given second. So I think that in this last scene they're intimally together Ford's charachter is trying to resist all of the feelings that have grown up inside him towards Seigner's charachter during the entire movie. This movie is all about suspense and the prospect of an intimate scene is kept until the end in a subtile way to the pleasure of everyone's frustration since it never gets to happen. And this is what I call great writing.

ya, a surrogate daughter he wanted to bang!!

I agree with Mississippi20. I would add that at this point of the movie his character has been awake for several days after being jet-lagged and running around Paris and is physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. He's spent and frustrated. So while she is dancing like that and he seems to kind of grab her and hug her at one point I think it's just cause he's fried and desperate and just needs someone to hold for a minute. But I never thought that he had any sexual feelings for her at all during the movie, just paternal, protective ones.

His wife is missing, he's worried and doesn't want to enjoy himself.

He's dancing with a sexy woman French lady and sharing an adventure with her, waiting for a middle east crime lord to turn up.

Yeah sure bump and grind lol

To me, this scene is meant to show the difference in adrenaline levels of these characters thrown together accidentally. Walker (Ford) looks weary and disoriented, certainly from having had to be up for so many hours. He's running on fumes. Michelle (Seigner) shows the "live hard, and for the moment" lifestyle her character has probably led all her life, even in the face of eminent danger.

I think the "sexual tension" mentioned in this thread is as much Michelle's growing attraction toward Walker, who she realizes is the type of good man she rarely interacts with. Michelle is beguiling in repeated attempts to get away from Walker. In the dance scene, however, she is the seductress, a strategy that has likely worked in the past with men. But Walker is distracted and disconnected, and maybe not out of marital fidelity but because he just wants resolution to the whole damn thing so he can relax....and sleep. (I actually felt like taking a hot shower and a nap after a recent viewing.)

Harrison Ford has always looked a bit stiff and clumsy to me in many of his roles (Indiana Jones movies, Clear and Present Danger, the Fugitive), never particularly smooth or debonair. But this awkwardness actually works. Ford is usually the "everyman" facing incredible physical challenges.

Even if he had envisioned the scene any other way, I don't think Roman Polanski could have gotten Ford to show the grace of a Fred Astaire or Gregory Hines in the dance scene. Ford probably has two left feet.

If you read Roger Ebert's review of "Frantic" elsewhere in this Web site, you'll see that, while he liked the movie, Ebert felt the dancing scene was unnecessary. I disagree. I think it works to show two different states of mind about the gravity and urgency of the situation.