Noriko's Dinner Table

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Noriko’s Dinner Table is Shion Sono’s close and calm observance and analysis of the broken relationships in modern society. Noriko’s running away from home is triggered by Mikan’s role playing as a high school student (but actually a hostess)—she wants to find her true self instead of just being in a seemingly happy family. Her tearing off the red silk thread from her coat signifies cutting off the umbilical cord with her real family. In Tokyo, she meets a girl named Kumiko and starts to join the business of acting as fake family members. Noriko’s fake identity 「Mitsuko」 have been created since then.

This film examines the isolated relationships in modern families as a contemporary phenomenon, and the scriptwriter cleverly replaces real relationships with cosplaying fake family members. It poses some questions: Is running away from the real identity easier to live on? Does fake identity actually construct a better world? When Noriko’s father, Tetsuzo, shows up in front of Noriko(while her character is Mitsuko) and her sister Yuka (her fake identity as Yoko), they try to stay in their characters and pretend that they do not know their father Tetsuzo. This scene has taken this film to a deeper level: metadiscourse. Noriko begins to complain about Testuzo behind a new character, Noriko, similar to her real name but a totally different identity. Yuka is perhaps the most sober person in this scene; she does not hide herself behind new Yuka, and says directly what is in her mind. When she finds out that Noriko is comfortably being herself in the end, she figures that it is her turn to leave this new family and constructs new relationships with it.