Year: 2002
Duration: 99'
In Tokyo, 54 female students commit suicide by throwing themselves under subway trains. A short while later, in a hospital, two nurses disappear. In both places, the police find a long spiral composed of pieces of human skin. With an anonymous phone call, “The Bat,” a hacker, calls the police’s attention to a site that anticipates the suicides. In search of clues, the police also interrogate Mitsuko, a girl who was accidentally implicated in her boyfriend’s suicide. The wave of violence continues, involving “The Bat,” the investigator and even Mitsuko. “I wanted to construct the film like TV zapping, jumping from one channel to another. Sometimes you end up with a detective movie, sometimes with an entertaining show or a musical program. Through all these ‘channels,’ I wanted to give the idea of the mood in Japan and the spectators understood that it isn’t by watching all these programs together that you can manage to understand anything. This is why I wanted to end the movie ambiguously, a choice which was criticized by some. But I wanted to keep the mystery going, so as not to reveal where the evil lurks.”
Biography
film director
Sion Sono
Sion Sono (Toyokawa, Japan, 1961) is an internationally acclaimed Japanese filmmaker. His movies depict Japanese society in a provocative and violent way, amid a plethora of pop culture references. His most renown films include Suicide Club (2002), which is part of a trilogy on alienation along with Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005), winner of the Berliner Zeitung Jury Award, and Love Exposure (2008), winner of the FIPRESCI Award and the Caligari Film Award at the Berlinale. Love Exposure is also the first film of the “trilogy of hate,” which includes Cold Fish (2010) and Guilty of Romance (2011). He participated to the Venice Film Festival in 2011 with the feature Himizu, and in 2013 with Why Don’t You Play in Hell. The Torino Film Festival paid tribute to him with a retrospective in 2011. He participated in several TFF editions with his films Tokyo Tribe (2014), Love & Peace (2015), TAG (2015) and Shinjuku Swan (2015).
FILMOGRAFIA
The Room (1992), Suicide Club (2002), Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005), Strange Circus (2005), Hazard (2006), Exte: Hair Extensions (2007), Love Exposure (2008), Cold Fish (2010), Guilty of Romance (2011), Himizu (2011), Why Don’t You Play in Hell (2013), Tokyo Tribe (2014), Love & Peace (2015), Riaru onigokko (TAG, 2015), Shinjuku suwan (Shinjuku Swan, 2015), Antiporno (2016), Tokyo Vampire Hotel (serie tv/tv series, 2017).
Cast
& Credits
regia, soggetto, sceneggiatura/director, story, screenplay
Sion Sono
fotografia/cinematography
Sato Kazuto
montaggio/film editing
Onaga Masahiro
musica/music
Hasegawa Tomoki
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Ishibashi Ryo (l’investigatore/Detective Kuroda Toshiharu), Nagase Masatoshi (l’investigatore/Detective Shibusawa), Hagiwara Sayako (Mitsuko), Kamon Yoko («The Bat» Kiyoko)
produttori/producers
Seiya Kawamata, Atsushi Numata
produzione/production
Omega Project
vendita all’estero/world sales
Kadokawa Shotem Company
