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)
Plots(1)
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)
Cast
田村泰二郎
Japan
Best movies:
Perfect Days (2023)
Memories of Matsuko (2006)
The Sun (2005)
Nao Nekota
Japan
Best movies:
The Foreign Duck, the Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker (2007)
Tokyo! (2008)
My Secret Cache (1997)
峯村リエ
Japan
Best movies:
Welcome to the Quiet Room (2007)
Flying Colors (2015)
Tokyo! (2008)
Mayu Harada
Best movies:
Every Day a Good Day (2018)
Tokyo! (2008)
Ryûsei Saitô
Japan
Best movies:
One Million Yen Girl (2008)
Tokyo! (2008)
The Housekeeper And The Professor (2006)
安住啓太
Japan
Best movies:
Tokyo! (2008)
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (2010)
Shin Godzilla (2016)
Soji Arai
Japan
Best movies:
Tokyo! (2008)
4.6 Billion Years of Love (2006)
Purukogi (2007)
Renji Ishibashi
Japan
Best movies:
Zatoichi at Large (1972)
Farewell to the Ark (1984)
Half a Confession (2004)