Set on a small fictional island with an aging and dwindling population, Ryuichi Hiroki’s “Noise” weaves a tangled web as the lies of the principal characters infect a tight-knit community. Working from Sho Kataoka’s script based on a manga by Tetsuya Tsutsui, Hiroki imbues the film with style, suspense and an unexpected pathos, while adroitly shifting from near farce to a more serious mode and keeping a discreet distance from his source material.
With its violent murders and desperate cover-ups, this film is fresh territory for the veteran Hiroki, who had settled into a pattern of alternating mass audience romantic dramas with critically acclaimed indie fare, but broke the cycle last year with the Netflix road movie “Ride or Die” starring Kiko Mizuhara and Honami Sato.
“Noise” is also on the commercial side of the scale but Hiroki’s signature feathery camerawork, which sensitively observes rather than mechanically records, sets the film stylistically apart from other mainstream films. Also, his musical tastes, which lean more toward tuneful understatement than broad-stroke underlining of emotional beats, are reflected in his collaboration with Yoshihide Otomo, a composer and guitarist whose thrumming bass notes deliver a Tarantino-esque tension and cool. Meanwhile, classical warhorses provide black comic counterpoints to the more frantic — and deadly — goings-on.