NOISE
(ノイズ)
dir. Yusako Matsumoto, 2017
124 mins. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

Yusako Matsumoto’s ensemble drama NOISE revisits the Akihabara massacre of 2008, in which a young schizophrenic named Tomohiro Katō drove a truck into the posh Tokyo shopping district, then took to attacking pedestrians with a knife - ultimately injuring 10 and killing 7. In the tradition of SHORT CUTS and TRAFFIC, Matsumoto uses disparate, seemingly unrelated plot threads to weave together a damning portrait of Japanese society. Real-life pop star Kokoro Shinozaki stars as Misa, an aspiring “idol” whose mother was killed in Akihabara; Ken (Kohsuke Suzuki) is a delivery boy nearing the end of his patience while his alcoholic mother squanders all his money, indebted to a loan shark at whose club Misa performs. Rie (Urara Anjo) is a wandering teenager whose dreams of wealth and fame eventually lead her to the same dark nexus as the other two characters. First-time filmmaker Matsuomo was a teenager at the time of Akihabara and also suffered the suicide of a close friend the same week as the massacre; he has described NOISE as his attempt to put the tragedies in relation to one another. The result is a hypnotic, paranoid puzzle of a film, a indictment of the curbed possibilities and existential dread lingering behind the ever-smoothening facade of life in the modern megalopolis.