Sono Shion
dir. Sion Sono
Japan 2001, 99’
Subtitles: Polish / English
Screenings
04.10.2023, 20:00
Cinema Muranów
Detective Kuroda is attempting to solve a series of suicides among Japanese young people. The more details he learns, the more macabre and absurd the tragic events appear. Typically for crime and horror movies, the plot plays out over a few days as the police desperately tries to unravel the mystery linking these ostensibly unconnected events.
Suicide Club, a highly original crime thriller, was to prove a watershed development in Sion Sono’s career. More popular by far than any of his previous pictures, it set him on a path to recognition at home and fame abroad, and marked the beginning of two highly fertile decades of work.
The film’s strength lies in the superb acting of its popular, versatile cast members, such as Ryō Ishibashi and Masatoshi Nagase, whom Sono juxtaposed with many young talents. Nonetheless, it was his decision to include the charismatic musician Teranishi Rōrī to provide an interpretation of the director’s poetry that guaranteed Suicide Club its cult status.
Prizes and festivals
Fantasia Film Festival 2003 – Jury Prize: Most Ground-Breaking Film: Sion Sono
Sion Sono
There are many ways to watch Suicide Club. It is absolutely a great crime thriller, and is as gripping as the best in its class. Where Sono’s early black-and-white picture The Room was a poetic deconstruction of the crime theme, this time he decided to stick to the widely accepted rules of the genre and meet all the expectations of its audiences.
If as well as following the plot we take a closer look at the issues the film raises, it soon becomes clear that Sono’s grim story also bears all the hallmarks of a social commentary. Like any mature artist, he too takes up the gauntlet of describing his country’s youth.
Suicide Club is thus a fairly serious film, though it does also have tragicomic, grotesque elements. He manages to avoid the pitfall of didacticism and moralizing in talking about young people from an adult perspective, and while he does muse on “these dreadful young people”, he manages to give us goosbumps in the process. Paradoxically, this is one of his most accessible films. Suicide Club is still a great choice for both crime mystery lovers and those with a penchant for the brutal cinema of the once popular “Asia Extreme” genre, and even for the most blasé fans of Japanese popular culture who have seen almost everything made according to the rules and are now in search of a commentary on those genres and their favourite Far Eastern pop culture.
Production team
director: Sion Sono
screenplay: Sion Sono
camera: Satō Kazuto
editor: Ōnaga Masahiro
score: Hasegawa Tomoki
cast: Ishibashi Ryō, Nagase Masatoshi, Hosho Mai, Rōrī Teranishi, Maro Akaji
producer: Kawamata Seiya
distributor: Omega Project
language: Japanese
colour/ BW: colour
