Composer:
Étienne CharryCast:
Satoshi Tsumabuki, Yū Aoi, Teruyuki Kagawa, Ayumi Itō, 藤谷文子, Julie Dreyfus, Denis Lavant, Jean-François Balmer, Naoto Takenaka, Ryō Kase, YosiYosi Arakawa, 大森南朋 (more)VOD (2)
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This triptych of short films about Asia’s most misunderstood metropolis features three directors known for cinematically capturing the uncanny, and showing the individual oddity and anxiety that lurks beneath the surface of our smooth social interaction. While the two Western filmmakers, Michel Gondry and Leos Carax, simply relocate their favorite themes to Tokyo, the Korean director Bong Joon-ho more successfully allows the city to dictate the style and content of his segment.
Gondry’s Interior Design depicts Hiroko (Ayako Fujitani) and Akira (Ryo Kase), an aimless artistic couple who overstay their welcome in a friend’s tiny apartment. Their illusions about finding success in Tokyo are gradually dissolved by the reality checks of their abysmal apartment search, some severe parking violations, and an embarrassing screening of Akira’s shoddy debut film. Hiroko’s antidote for her disappointment is to forcibly fluctuate the boundaries between reality and her perception, which ultimately results in an unusual transformation.
Merde, Carax’s contribution, is the most memorable of the trio, but also the least successful. Denis Lavant plays a grotesque miscreant who periodically emerges from the sewers to terrorize the city. The sequence itself becomes a monstrous barrage of symbolism, as Carax variously invokes Tokyo’s issues with immigration, terrorism, technology, translation, and the memory of war.
Bong’s Shaking Tokyo is a slow ode to the subculture of "hikikomori," Japanese agoraphobes who refuse to emerge from their homes. A shut-in (Teruyuki Kagawa) lives a contented life in his immaculately ordered apartment, marked by the straight lines of his stacked books and the harmonious circles of paper-towel rolls and water bottles. When a series of earthquakes and an encounter with an alluring pizza girl force the recluse to venture outside, Bong begins to blur the sharp defining lines and edges within the frame, washing out the crisp focus with an ethereal surge of light.
(Liberation)
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Reviews (2)
“Neo-magic bizarre surrealism" like straight out of Murakami’s tales. Two Frenchmen, one Korean and as much originality that can fit into a space the size of Tokyo. Immediately, Gondry’s contribution sets a standard for the following tales that is so high, it is impossible to exceed. Which soon proves to be true, but even so the remaining two tales easily deserve a solid five stars. Although Merde (a sort of artsy Toxic Avenger) is perhaps a little longer than it needed to be while Shaking Tokyo on the other hand has a few loose ends. But who cares when even the “movie inside the movie" in Gondry’s tale alone is more original and more entertaining that ninety percent of movies that come to the movie theaters here in the Czech Republic. P.S.: And this certainly isn’t just an intellectual affairs for one in a thousand cinephiles, but rather a movie that can appeal to a wide range of viewers. It’s just that this range is rather more bizarre than usual.
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Franz Kafka and Eugène Ionesco have their worthy successors among the current generation of filmmakers. It's absurd, provocative, crazy, comical, and simply extraordinary. The individual stories are based on interesting ideas and original processing, and I especially liked the first one - Interior Design, influenced by surrealism. I know similarly unnecessary people, and maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to deal with their existence this way. The third story about the alienation of people in a modern metropolis is also good. I think it's good that the film was shot in Tokyo by foreign filmmakers, and using a European approach confronted with Asian realities had a positive impact on the result. Overall impression: 90%.
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