Noriko’s Dinner Table


Noriko’s Dinner Table
Released: 2006
Director: Sion Sono

Much has been said about Sion Sono’s masterful film Suicide Club and its biting social commentary on Japanese society. Less, however, has been said of its quiet follow-up film, Noriko’s Dinner Table. This is a shame – while it lacks the violent and shocking nature of the first film, its social critique may be perhaps even more severe and jarring than that of Suicide Club.

The story follows Noriko, an average girl who feels bored with her small-town life and craves the adventure and excitement of the city. She dreams of moving to Tokyo after finishing high school, but her father is strictly against this, alienating Noriko further and pushing her towards the company she finds on a mysterious website. Having found companionship with several girls, one of which goes by Ueno Station 54, Noriko decides to run away from home to join her. What Noriko ends up finding is that her new friend – going by Kumiko in person – heads an organization of actors, dedicated to renting their time out as family members to paying clients. Meanwhile, the family she left behind begins to tears itself apart in the wake of her disappearance.

This film is not a straightforward sequel to Suicide Club; it functions as its own parallel story, with elements that expand upon the mythos set up in the first film. There is significant overlap between them, but each can be viewed on their own. The direct references allow for the viewer to fully take in how expansive this organization seems to be. In this film, the events of Suicide Club appear to be little more than a drop in the bucket of a much larger and more ominous story.

While Suicide Club became known for its shocking and graphic violence, Noriko’s Dinner Table almost takes the opposite approach. When the violence in the film does occur, most often it opts to cut away from showing it, instead focusing on the reactions of the characters who bear witness to it. We see this in the train station suicide, a scene that was notably gory in Suicide Club instead focuses on Noriko’s wide-eyed face, and the splash of blood that hits her. Later on, while her father presumably kills the guards from her circle, Noriko stares out the window daydreaming and we are party to her internal monologue instead of the violence occurring only inches away from her.

A different version of this story could have been told, where we only follow their father’s investigation, culminating in a tearful and happy reunion that frees them all from the evil family circle that brainwashed his daughters. A version of the story where Noriko escapes an abusive home life only to find herself in greater danger once she reaches Tokyo. A version where Yuka is simply an echo of her
older sister and follows directly in her footsteps.

This is not that kind of story. Instead, this is a story about choices. The truth is: Noriko’s life is mostly fine. Her parents love her, even if they are benignly neglectful in the way that many parents are: they fail to truly listen to her and understand her. We see how this leads to Noriko being drawn in by the
lure of Haikyo.com, and her choice to leave makes sense, because this is Noriko’s story. Yuka loves and understands her sister enough to find her, but the two girls have vastly different opinions and reactions to almost everything that happens in the story. She’s deeply insightful, enough to interpret the website’s intentions, as well as predict her father’s reaction to her disappearance almost exactly, but chooses to send him on the chase regardless. This is also Yuka’s story. Tetsuzo investigates their disappearance with passion, but he must reflect on how even his youngest daughter gave him more credit than perhaps he deserved and the ways in which he failed his eldest. He pushes his family away, distances his wife to the point where she commits suicide, and he still chooses to persist. This is also Tetsuzo’s story.

The horror of this film lurks in the philosophical quandaries, in its unanswerable questions, and the loose threads that we long to pull on. It lies in the realizations that hit you just after the moment has passed. It wasn’t until my second viewing that it struck me that Noriko listed the pseudonyms of her friends on Haikyo.com: Ueno Station 54, Cripple #5, Long Neck, Midnight, and Broken Dam. It wasn’t
until then that I realized that Noriko’s presence on the train platform meant that she had to witness the deaths of three of the girls she’d initially referred to as her best friends. That she’d likely heard the firsthand account of Broken Dam’s murder at the hands of a client from Kumiko.

Kumiko herself is a fascinating character. She looms over the proceedings, larger-than-life, a literal manifestation of an old symbol of broken Japanese families. Her username, Ueno Station 54, is likely in part derived from the stories of “coin locker babies,” a type of child abandonment that was seen in Japan throughout the 90s. Her actions read as malicious throughout the film, and it’s easy to interpret her as the antagonist of the story of two sisters and their father’s desperate attempt to reunite his family.

But this is not that kind of story. This is also Kumiko’s story.

This is a story that gives us a deeply intimate look into each character’s mind; we see her find a pair of cast-off rubber boots that she pretends are part of a happy childhood. We see a woman approach her claiming to be her real mother, and how Kumiko rejects her, as someone who cannot properly act like a mother rather than her real abandonment. Realizing that Kumiko is most likely the result of abandonment and neglect complicates her character slightly. Even if it doesn’t quite elicit sympathy from a viewer, it encourages you to question how much you really understand about her intentions and the way she views relationships as purely transactional. Her memory of Broken Dam’s musings on the roles people play are quite telling – everyone wants to believe they’re a lion (powerful and in control), but there need to be rabbits (passive, to feed the lions). As she notes, there is no such jungle. She’s unflinchingly willing to accept a role as a rabbit if it’s asked of her.

Another character I ended up being quite interested in was Tangerine, the childhood friend that Noriko recalls at several key points in the film. Her inclusion intrigued me, because it would be easy to view it as extraneous, particularly in a film with a nearly three hour runtime. However, Tangerine’s presence offers valuable insight into Noriko’s perspective both at the beginning and end of the film.

At the core, she seems to represent the unattainable freedom that Noriko desires. In the beginning, Noriko thinks of Tangerine as mature and adult; a real woman, unlike the naïve girl she saw herself as. By the end, Noriko has achieved her goal of moving to Tokyo and becoming what she viewed as a mature woman, shedding her skin and becoming Mitsuko. But she has a vision of Tangerine again.
This time, what became clear to me was that the thing that is desirable about Tangerine is that she is confident, unapologetically herself, and happy. These are the things that Mitsuko could never achieve.

Another small detail that seemed key to this film’s message was Taeko’s painting. Early on, she recreates the image of her family at the cactus park from a photograph into a painting, a type of art that is inherently filtered through the view of the artist. In doing so, she creates a fictionalized portrait; one that depicts a very different family than the one in the photograph. In this painting, Taeko’s children can be smiling, rather than avoidant and distant. They can be huddled together rather than standing separately, as though actively pulling away from one another. They can be a perfect family.

In the end, the extended family session and dinner scene feels a lot like that painting. The elements are there, but they’re not quite right: they’re in a house that looks like the one they shared as a family, but it is not that house; there is a woman there to play their mother, but she is not Taeko.

Ultimately, that happy scene of them playing a family is exactly that – it’s a recreation of the image of a family but it’s not the real thing. In this performance, Noriko can be honest with her father. He can be more lenient and forgiving with her than he might have been before. They can pretend to be the family they wished they’d been when they had the chance.

Like Taeko’s painting, the image isn’t real, but there’s a comfort in the falseness of it.

The image, however, is unsustainable. By the time morning comes, the spell has broken. Yuka has left once more, searching for something new. Noriko sheds the Mitsuko role and declares that she is Noriko – but we know that she, too, is a fundamentally different person than the one she began as.

At its core, this film is about many things: family, identity, and the bonds we forge with other human beings. It raises several questions about the roles we play in society, and while it does not really seek to answer those questions, sometimes simply asking is the scariest thing you can do. Are you connected to yourself? Are you a lion or are you a rabbit? And when it comes down to it, do you really have a choice in the matter? Yuka’s plea comes to mind, for us to “all be rabbits again” and go back to that sense of childish innocence, but we know the truth.

There is no such jungle.

Rating: 5 out of 5. One of my absolute personal favorites. Highly recommended!

Scariness level: There aren’t a lot of traditional scares, but I do think this is one of the most chilling movies I’ve ever watched.

Violence level: Low compared to its predecessor, but there’s still a fair amount. Several stabbings are shown on screen, and the mass suicide at the train station.


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