Noriko's Dinner Table

Noriko's Dinner Table takes an hour to start, an hour to end, and half an hour to transition between the two. The premise and script is an unreal progression from Suicide Club and an evolution of the idea into European adulthood. To give you an idea, it's as if Lynch fucked Haneke and someone took notes. So for the second time (after Strange Circus), Sono was all set for a sure thing with me. And once again, he screwed it up. While the brilliant form of Strange Circus was buried by a stupidly designed climax that screamed at the viewer for so long that it kept escalating until it got annoying, Noriko was completely undercut by form. The film looks awful, like a debut paid for out of pocket, and it takes quite a while to start taking it seriously (thankfully, it's insured by the running time). Even then, however, another failing persists: the internal monologues, which are nothing more than a literal description of the situation we're seeing – the boy hugs his grandmother and we're told "the boy hugged his grandmother", the man returns to the room and the voice over reports "I've returned to the room". This pandering to a blind audience is certainly not something I appreciate, and nearly 160 minutes of the film makes you change your attitude about it several times, but never in its favor. (14.10.2011)