.::. Suicide Club .::.
自殺サークル
Country of Origin: Japan
Production year: 2002
Genre: Thriller
Japanese title: Jisatsu Saakuru
Language: Japanese
Running time: 99 minutes
Suicide Circle (自殺サークル), also known as Suicide Club or Jisatsu Circle, is a 2002 Japanese independent film and part of a trilogy that gained a considerable amount of notoriety in film festivals around the world for its controversial subject matter and gory presentation, which led to its becoming a cult movie. It won the Jury Prize for "Most Ground-Breaking Film" at the Fant-Asia Film Festival. The movie was written and directed by Shion Sono. It deals with a wave of seemingly unconnected suicides that strikes Japan and the efforts of the police to determine the reasons behind the strange behavior.
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Plot
On May 26th, 54 teenage schoolgirls gather on a platform at Shinjuku station in Tokyo to commit a mass suicide. As the train approaches the station, they line up on the edge of the platfom and hold each other's hand. Just before the train arrives to the platform, they throw themselves in front of it. This leaves the station in complete chaos as blood literally splashes on the platform from under the train. In the midst of the chaos someone leaves a small white bag on the platform. Meanwhile, in a hospital in Tokyo during a night shift, the security guard is left astonished as one nurse of two disappears without a trace and the other jumps off a window with no reason. A small white bag is found in the hospital.
The chief of police and three Detectives, Kuroda, Murata and Shibusawa, take the case. One of the detectives suggests there might be a suicide cult involved but the chief of police does not believe in the theory and laughs it off. The detectives start to seek a connection linking the 54 schoolgirls together. Soon an internet hacker named Kiyoko, who prefers to be called "The Bat" calls them and reports a strange link between the suicides and a website she found, which has nothing but red and white dots. She agrees to help the police to solve the crime.
The two identical white bags, one found at Shinjuku station and the other at the hospital, are opened and reveal their gruesome contents: two rolls of human skin stiched together in the same way. The investigators make a theory that the skin was removed from the suicide victims before the suicide.
Eventually detective Kuroda comes home to his wife and two children. At this point, the girl band "Dessert" is introduced. Later, Kuroda's son, Toru, shows Kuroda a weird website his friend showed him, with nothing but a white flashing circle and a short message regarding the suicides.
On May 28th, at a high school in Tokyo, a group of girls and boys who are on the roof during a break start joking about the mass suicide and end up on the edge of the roof, imitating the 54 schoolgirls on the edge of the platform. They pretend to jump off the roof but their joking takes a turn for the worse when some of them actually jump off the building. The ones who did not jump look down in shock. Right after they decide to jump as well. Their mass suicide has nothing to do with the suicide cult since no white bag was found from the school.
Mitsuko after getting hit by her boyfriendOn May 29th, the suicide boom has spread all over Japan. Mitsuko is on her way home, when she gets hit by her boyfriend Masa who has thrown himself off a roof. Mitsuko is taken to the police station for questioning. In the autopsy room Kuroda discovers Masa had an open wound on his back which went right through a butterfly tattoo. He discovers that one of the pieces of skin on the roll fits perfectly on the wound. Mitsuko acknolwedges knowing about the wound, but denies ever hearing about anything about a suicide club. Later, the police do a strip search on Mitsuko to see if she is missing any skin and discover that she has no skin missing, but instead an identical butterfly tattoo. Before Mitsuko leaves the police station, she seems to catch detective's Shibu's attention, who offers her his business card so she can contact him should new information arise.
On May 30th the police receive a call from a child who coughs after each sentence. He warns that on that evening at 7:30 another mass suicide will take place at the same platform. That evening the detectives organize a stake-out in order to prevent another mass suicide from happening but with poor results: no one there even attempts a suicide. But instead on that evening people all over Japan commit suicide for no apparent reason. Kuroda comes home just to find out his family has committed suicide.
The Bat gets caught by the henchmen of a mysterious psychopath who calls himself "Genesis". She and her sister are taken to his underground lair. A girl in a white sack is brutally raped and killed by one of the henchmen right in front of The Bat and her friend, while Genesis sings a song.
The detectives have gathered at Kuroda's home, where they get a call from the same child who warned them about the second suicide wave. He asks Kuroda if he is "in contact with himself" and that can one be in contact with himself after death. After the call Kuroda grabs a gun and kills himself in front of the detectives.
At Genesis' lair The Bat manages to get on a computer. She tries to send an email telling her whereabouts and asking for help. She gets caught but Genesis decides it is time for him to get caught and get his name in the books of history. The email is sent to the police and he and his henchmen get arrested, receiving mass media coverage.
On June 1st, Mitsuko goes to her boyfriend's home to return his helmet. She goes to his old room. Soon she realizes something is not right. First she notices the girl band Dessert's posters on the wall. Then she takes a look at the photo album where she sees pictures of Masa and the members of the band together. Then the phone rings. She notices that the ringtone is one of Dessert's songs. One poster gets her attention. She grabs the cell phone and notices that the girls' fingers and the numbers on their shirts have a connection: with the help of the cell phone she unravels the poster's secret message: S-U-I-C-I-D-E. Not long after she has cracked the code behind the poster, the other phone starts ringing. She answers it and is asked to give a PIN number, which is 7842433, formed by a different number on each of the girls' shirts. After typing the number she gets a message where a boy tells her there is no suicide club and invites the receiver of the message to come over.
Mitsuko begins to decode Dessert-related material, though why exactly is left unespecified, and in the middle of this finds out Dessert has a concert at an arena and goes there. With the code she just got, she is able to unlock a door and get to the backstage area, where she goes to a stage. The stage curtains are opened and she sees a group of children in the audience. One of the children asks her if she came to repair her connection with herself. She shouts she is connected to herself and the children applaud. She then goes with them to a place where her tattoo is removed. A new roll of skin is made which ends up to the police. One of the detectives notices that one of the pieces of the skin belongs to Mitsuko. That evening he goes to the station where he sees Mitsuko and thinks she is going to commit a suicide. He grabs her arm but she pulls it out. The train arrives but she does not kill herself. Instead, she quietly gets on it, the door closes and the train leaves. As it does, Dessert performs its last concert and the movie ends.
There is some questions about whether the child who calls the detectives is a boy or a girl, but if you have heard what a young Japanese boy sounds like, it's clear that it is a boy who calls the detective.****
Spoilers end here.
Cast
Writer and Director Shion Sono.Detective Kuroda - Ryo Ishibashi
Detective Murata - Akaji Maro
Mitsuko - Saya Hagiwara
Kiyoko (Koomori, "The Bat") - Yoko Kamon
Genesis - Rolly
Detective Shibusawa - Masatoshi Nagase
Detective Hagitani - Hideo Sako
Security Guard Jiro Suzuki - Takashi Nomura
Nurse Yoko Kawaguchi - Tamao Satou
Nurse Sawada - Mai Hosho
Kiyomi Kuroda - Kimiko Yo
Sakura Kuroda - Mika Kikuchi
Toru Kuroda - So Matsumoto
Staff
Director - Shion Sono
Producers - Masaya Kawamata, Toshikazu Tomita, Seiji Yoshida
Photography - Kazuto Sato
Editor - Akihiro Onaga
Sequels
As of early 2006 the movie has one sequel and a proposed follow-up.
Noriko's Dinner Table (Noriko no Shokutaku) depicts events from before and after the happenings of Suicide Circle, and gives more insight on several plotholes of its predecessor. A Japanese DVD release of the movie is expected due late 2006.
Director Shion Sono has confirmed that the production a third and final movie in the series, currently nameless, will soon begin shooting.
The Book
Jisatsu Saakuru: Kanzenban book cover.Jisatsu Saakuru: Kanzenban (自殺サークル 完全版, translated as Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition) was written by Shion Sono in April, 2002. The book deals with the themes of both Suicide Circle and Noriko's Dinner Table, bringing the two movies' plot closer. So far no plans for an English edition have appeared.
The Manga
A homonymous manga by author Usumaru Furuya appeared at the sime time of the movie's Japanese DVD release. Although Furuya's intention was to faithfully reproduce the film's plot, Shion Sono asked him to write his own story. As a result, the Suicide Circle manga is much more straightforward and easy to understand than the movie, and features much more solid character development. It deals with the same opening scene, but there is a twist: out of the 54 suicidal girls, a survivor is reported: Saya Kota. Her best friend, Kyoko, must now unveil the secret of the Suicide Club and save Saya from falling deeper into it.
Trivia
The name of the pop group in the movie, Dezaato (i.e., Dessert), is purposely romanized differently throughout the movie: "Dessart", "Dessret" and "Desert".
The pop song by Dezaato that appears throughout the movie, "Mail Me", is actually a cover of an homonymous song originally by Haruko Momoi.
