Movies - Jisatsu Circle

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	Movies - Jisatsu Circle

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Country of Origin:	Japan
Production year:	2002
Genre:	Thriller
Japanese title:	Jisatsu saakuru
Language:	Japanese
Running time:	99 minutes

Jisatsu Circle (自殺サークル), also known as Suicide Club or Suicide 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.

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.

On 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. He or she 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.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Jisatsu Circle ]

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