Noriko's Dinner Table (Noriko no Shokutaku, 2005)

Sion Sono's 2½ hour tour-de-force follow-up to Suicide Circle (Club), Noriko's Dinner Table, might be a touch overwrought at times but I think every ounce is completely necessary for what Sono intends to accomplish. Both bracketing and running concurrent the events in Suicide Circle, Dinner Table (a story that nearly defies a written portrayal), is about 17 year–old Noriko Shimabara finding solice from her tired, small town home/existence in Haikyo.com's community forums as poster "Mitsuko", culminating in her running away from home in the midst of an electrical blackout; opportunity arrives in many forms. Noriko meets with forum mod Ueno54, a.k.a Kumiko, and without a place to go, is adopted into her family. As her storyline progresses, Sono then turns to Noriko's sister Yuka Shimabara's attempts to rationalize and discover the whys of Noriko's departure, which leads her to Tokyo as well. Maybe for the same reasons. Sono then turns to their father, then Kumiko for two more facets.

I've been vague not only because it would require spoilers (although I could argue there are no spoilers) but the film is told from different perspectives and gets a bit meta, lending to lengthy connections and reasons/motivations for everything that happens to the girls and their parents. Midnight Eye's review doesn't even attempt to parse the film; Mandiapple gives it a go. I'm doing this over lunch, at work, so time is an issue for me. In the end, I'm thoroughly satisfied with both it's originality and the connections with Suicide Circle. Yet, this is more a film among itself; think Miike's Black Society Trilogy.

I had reservations about the amount of Noriko's (sometimes third-person; unreliable?) voice-over narration, there's a lot, but those were allayed as Sono carried the essential narration into the other characters' contributions. Sono packs a hell of a lot into this film, including a few, not false mind you, semi-conclusions that honestly deepen his story with each progression. I dare say this could be Sono's masterpiece. We'll see.