Year: 2005
Duration: 158'
17-year-old Noriko takes advantage of a blackout to flee to Tokyo, where she joins a group of adolescents who, under the leadership of Kumiko, find fake relatives for young people in need of them. A short while later, a group of girls commit suicide and Yuka, Noriko’s sister, who fears Noriko is involved, also runs away from home and joins her in Tokyo. In the meantime, the girls’ mother, who is desperate at having been abandoned by both her daughters, kills herself, and the father sets off in search of them with the help of the agency run by Kumiko. “After the success of Suicide Circle, I had planned on making a literary adaptation of it. It’s very popular in Japan to take successful works and adapt them into other artistic forms. I began to write the novel based on Suicide Circle but, since I didn’t want to copy the exact same story, I modified lots of things. In the end, the novel was so popular that they suggested I make a film out of it and that’s how Noriko’s Dinner Table was born.”
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, sceneggiatura/director, screenplay
Sion Sono
fotografia/cinematography
Tanigawa S?hei
montaggio/film editing
It? Jun’ichi
musica/music
Hasegawa Tomoki
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Fuk?shi Kazue (Shimabara Noriko/Mitsuko), Yoshitaka Yuriko (Shimabara Yuka/Y?ko), Mitsuishi Ken (Shimabara Tetsuzo), Tsugumi (Kumiko «Ueno Station 54»), Miyata Sanae (Shimabara Taeko), Namiki Shir? (Ikeda), Mitsuya Y?ko (Tangerine), Ando Tamae (Broken Dam)
produttore/producer
Suzuki Takeshi
produzione/production
Mother Ark Co. Ltd
vendita all’estero/world sales
Eleven Arts
