Noriko's Dinner Table
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| Noriko's Dinner Table | |
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| 紀子の食卓 | |
| Country of Origin: | Japan |
| Production year: | 2005 |
| Genre: | Drama, Horror |
| Original title: | Noriko no Shokutaku |
| Language: | Japanese |
| Running time: | 159 minutes |
Noriko's Dinner Table (紀子の食卓 Noriko no Shokutaku?), is the prequel to the cult movie Suicide Club (Jisatsu Saakuru), a Japanese film concerning a mass suicide of 54 schoolgirls and how it leads the law to a shady cult. It won the Don Quijote award at the 40th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic an a special mention. The movie was written and directed by Sion Sono. This film deals with various themes such as the generation gap on modern families, the nature of happiness, suicide, the lack of real communication, the alienation it causes and how the internet is used in an attempt to mend it, and the concept of family. It takes place before, during, and after the first film, in hopes of explaining some of the lingering mysteries that film left behind. Argo Pictures K.K. (Arugo Pikuchâzu K.K.) plans to release Noriko's Dinner Table theatrically in Japan in September, 2006.
- Tagline: The family that eats together stays together.
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[edit] Plot
A 17-year-old teenage girl named Noriko Shimabara lives with her quiet family, formed by her sister Yuka, her mother Teako, and her father Tetsuzo, in Toyokawa. Feeling alienated and misunderstood by her parents, Noriko resorts to the internet where she finds a website, haikyo.com, where other teenage girls from Japan gather. There, after making new and unknown friends, she feels truly at "home" and eventually runs away from her unhappy life to Tokyo, where she plans on meeting Haikyo's leader, a mysterious girl who goes by the nickname of Ueno54.
The girl turns out to be the head of "Family Circle", a cult that changes the identities of people unhappy with their lives and causes them to start fake families with people who lost theirs to suicide. Eventually, Yuka runs away too and joins Noriko in the Circle, where they and many other girls take new identities. However, after the mass suicide where 54 of them jump in front of a train (the opening events of Suicide Circle), the leader of the cult becomes scarier and scarier as Noriko's father decides to attempt tracking her down, but unveiling the Family Circle's true intentions isn't as simple as one hopes.
[edit] Cast
- Noriko Shimabara - Kazue Fukiishi
- Tetsuzo Shimabara - Ken Mitsuishi
- Yuka Shimbara - Yuriko Yoshitaka
- Kumiko (Ueno54) - Tsugumi
[edit] Staff
- Director - Shion Sono
- Executive Producer - Yutaka Morohashi
- Producer - Takeshi Suzuki
- Screenplay - Sion Sono
- Photography - Souhei Tanigawa
- Production Designer - Toru Fujita
- Original Music - Tomoki Hasegawa
- Editor - Junichi Ito
[edit] Novel
- Jisatsu Saakuru: Kanzenban (自殺サークル 完全版, translated as Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition) was written by Sion Sono in April, 2002. This book was as a draft of sorts for Noriko's Dinner Table, according to Sono. In fact, the movie is divided in four "chapters", as the book, and is constantly narrated by its characters, like the book. The story of Kanzenban deals with both the events of this movie and those of its prequel, Suicide Club. So far no plans for an English edition have appeared.
