Noriko's Dinner Table

Japanese director Sion Sono's Suicide Club (2002) ended on a ghastly note with a group of schoolgirls throwing themselves in front of a speeding subway train—an event obliquely alluded to in this 2005 follow-up. Ostensibly, Noriko's Dinner Table is about two teen sisters who run away to Tokyo and become involved with a strange young woman they met online, manager of an oddball business with employees who pretend to be family members of clients (the film also follows the girls' distraught father, obsessed with finding his daughters, especially after his wife's suicide). But Noriko's Dinner Table is more of a contemplation of various issues, including youth alienation, the generation gap, the dangers of role-playing, and the hypnotic power of the Internet—along with the mystery of personal identity. The patience required by the film's denseness is compounded by both its fractured presentation—a series of chapters narrated in virtually non-stop fashion by various characters, with constant shifts in perspective and chronology—and lengthy running-time (159 minutes) en route to a blood-soaked but ultimately ambiguous finale. Helped along by a hauntingly minimalist music score, Noriko's Dinner Table offers a strange combination of psychological thriller and bleak comedy in a flawed but frequently mesmerizing film that will appeal to more adventurous viewers. Recommended. [Note: DVD Extras include an interview with a (rather sour) Sono, a “making of” featurette, and the trailer. Bottom line: a small but decent extras package for a strange but compelling film.] (F. Swietek)