Noriko's Dinner Table

A Japanese film following one family. Noriko lives in the provinces. Her father edits the local newspaper and decides at home how everything is done. The girl is bored. She wants to go to Tokyo, dreams of university, and her father refuses. She finds a website. She registers there and takes another name. One day she runs away. There is a group in Tokyo. A woman called Kumiko runs the operation, and the business is this: people are hired. A client orders a scene. He wants a girl in place of the daughter he lost, wants a family gathering, wants a farewell, and the group performs it. Noriko is good at this work. She carries the parts easily and after a while does not remember her own name. Then her sister runs away too. From there the film follows the father's search. He uses the methods of journalism to trace them and looks for his daughters in the city. What the narrative is interested in is not running away but playing a part: the film says the family is a hire as well; nobody at home is themselves, and the scene performed outside is the same thing. The narrative is divided into four sections, each told in a different person's voice. The same events come back again and again with a different meaning. The voice over is very dense. The film moves almost like a novel, and for many viewers that is too much. The production is tied to another film. It tells what comes before and after a film the same director built around a mass suicide. Kazue Fukiishi, Tsugumi, Ken Mitsuishi and Yuriko Yoshitaka are in the cast. Sion Sono wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes long, uncomfortable Japanese films and hard narratives about family. Who it is not for: anyone without patience; the film runs past two and a half hours and in some sections the narration takes the place of the storytelling.