Review of Noriko's Dinner Table (2005) by Eizle-Bern G — 24 Jul 2009

I came into Noriko's Dinner Table with no real preconceptions created by Suicide Club. I haven't seen that movie in over two years and I wasn't exactly bowled over by it in the first place. This was a blank-slate film experience for me, and it's not a sequel or prequel so much as an independent movie operating laterally to Suicide Club, so why am I even talking about all this. I guess what I mean to say is if you're searching for Suicide Club's meaning in this film you're not bound to find any; instead, consider yourself treated to a director who has no idea what the fuck he's doing. I really liked Strange Circus, but this and Suicide Club are convincing me that Sion Sono just likes to masturbate all over his film reels and see if what he produces is worth anything to his viewers. This, far more than Suicide Club, is a collection of half-developed themes and psychological dead ends, posing plenty of interesting tidbits but never really following through on them.

Most of the movie is engaging, and by the time you realize it's completely meaningless you feel obligated to finish it anyway because it's so goddamn long. The primary theme of the film, "feeling connected to yourself," is poorly developed and far too oblique to sustain it for its 160 minute running time. If Sono's intention was to get his viewers to examine the subtleties of the film, perhaps he could have kept the voiceover out of it, one of the most overbearing narrations in any recent film. The first hour sounds and plays like a cheap J-drama to no real effect. The flashbacks don't illuminate or deepen the emotional connection to the film at all. All these blank shots suggest to me that Sono had a handful of underdeveloped concepts and images from his novel that he wanted to string together on screen, but discovered that it wasn't as deep or profound as he thought. Admittedly, the notion of a "family rental" unit is great, and the undeniable pain of a father who has lost his daughters to indifference is a juicy emotional crux to stable the movie with (enhanced by strong performances from the father and the older sister). Its lack of focus is frustrating, though. This film is based on a 2002 novel by Sono, and though the adaptation came out the same year as his magnum opus Strange Circus (2005), it's clear that in that three year gap he learned a lot about restraint and framing.

Gravest of all is Sono's ignorance of a harsh truth: if you're going to make a three-hour art film, it needs to be artistic. If you choose to disregard unconventional narrative and A-to-B storytelling, you need to anchor your project in the world of cinema. Noriko's Dinner Table looks and sounds like shit, probably a trapping of budget. Its cheapness and lack of cohesive vision make the whole project seem like an exceptionally violent soap opera, or again, a trashy J-drama. I would never have expected it from Sono, considering his penchant for pomp, but the movie is so utterly uncompelling on all levels that I feel like it shouldn't exist at all.