Tokyo! (2009)

Japanese films can be among the strangest films in the world. This is not a complaint...just a fact. Sometimes the films are delightfully strange (such as "Happiness of the Katakuris") and others, like "Tokyo!" are weird....and NOT pleasantly weird. It's a shame, as I really wanted to like this one but can see no reason to see this film."Tokyo!" consists of three short films. All are set in Tokyo and feature Japanese or mostly Japanese casts. However, two of the films are directed by French directors and another by a Korean one. Perhaps this might explain why I liked it so much less than other weird Japanese films."INTERIOR DESIGN" is the best of the three films. It's a story about a couple that move to Tokyo and have a hard time fitting in and adjusting. All this is pretty enjoyable and the couple is cute. BUT, out of the middle of nowhere, the film becomes weird--super, amazingly weird. I think the theme is something about depersonalization but frankly the payoff just isn't there. Trippy and worth, perhaps, a 3."MERDE" is different because it starts off VERY weirdly and is about a weird creature that lives in the sewer and runs about doing stupid (and rather funny) things. I liked the film a lot. And then, for no apparent reason, he began murdering people and the film because bloody and unfun. Of the three films, this one was the worst--tedious beyond belief and yechy--with a bit of VERY unsexy full-frontal nudity to boot. Unpleasant, that's for sure and worthy of a 1."SHAKING TOKYO" is a strange but somewhat enjoyable film about the 'hikikomori'. A hikikomori is a strange sort of person who simply gives up on life and becomes a recluse--and it usually begins in the teen years and may last many years. According to one article I read, this mental illness affects a whopping 700000--though no disorder like this is seen in western society. It is NOT the same as agoraphobia (caused by fear of life outside the home) but is more like a voluntary sort of hermetic life. The story is about one man content to live this sort of withdrawn life until he meets a very odd pizza delivery lady. Not pleasant but not awful and I'd give it a 3.Overall, none of the stories are particularly good and all are odd just for the sake of being odd. I just couldn't stand that there NEVER was any payoff for any of these stories and cannot recommend the film.

3 stories 3 different directors with genuine view on Tokyo. I don't know if it was developed as one film created of 3 different stories or was it just put together later on. Each approach is different but i liked the most "Shaking Tokyo" from my favorite Asian film-maker Joon-ho Bong. This surreal point of view on Hikikimori disorder is in a way funny, and at the same moment depressing, and kinda scary. Gong combines all these ingredients and creates almost perfect mix as he is known for.I didn't like that much 2 other stories. Carax's "merde" probably reflects certain view of Japanese people towards foreigners (as something rather bizarre and scary). Japan is full of places which can be entered only by genuine Japanese. Some people might see it as desire too separate from all of disgusting "others". Although I'm not sure of it because I was speechless after seeing how it ends up. Maybe its a remark to how people there see religion. I probably should see it again to understand it better. Anyway director pictured Merde as demonic and disgusting creature (even horrifying for example in one scene in sewers), which can be understood only by one of his kind. Who is shown almost as demonicly as main character.I almost forgot to mention that second part drags to long.Gordys Interior design is just a story about couple in a Tokyo which cant find themselves in new environment. How important it is for an individual to fit in, and how difficult it may be. Complete lack of beauty(just like in Merde)(excluding girls}. In moments I found it creepy as hell. Although this one seemed the most like from the native. Maybe its also about desire to feel needed and just wanting to disappear and stop being a burden for someone. Or maybe women in Tokyo are happy with objectifying them or just being an addition to a men who appreciate them. I have no idea its just attempt to interpret. Seems like this one was to difficult for me :P Maybe you wont have this problem...I found this triptych interesting and amusing enough to recommend.Interior Design 6/10 Merde 6 only because of 2 long second part Shaking Tokyo 8/10

First I'd like to mention that I disagree with the comparison between 'Tokyo!' and 'Paris, je t'aime'. Yes they are both triptych films, but the similarities end there. The film sits more comfortably alongside triptych films such as: Three... Extremes (Horror) and Eros (Love and Sex). If you want to see something like 'Paris, je t'aime' you won't find it here. With that being said--on to the review.(Spoilers Start Here)The first of the trio of short films start's with 'Interior Design' directed by Michel Gondrey. I won't give to much away (for those that haven't seen it) but the film deals with being made to feel useless, in a society that values vocation/social status above a persons true value.If you're a fan of Gondrey, then this is a must see. The film itself felt like it came up a little short (no pun intended) of Gondrey's usual work. But, the ending of the film makes up for the films flaws/short comings. ***6 out of 10 stars***Second of these three films is 'Merde' by director Leos Carax (of whom I haven't seen any of his previous films). Merde is a very baffling and funny film about a man (Merde) with a red beard, one milky eye, very long fingernails and green suit. Merde comes out of the sewers every so often and terrorizes the citizens of Japan, he speaks his own language and no one knows where he comes from. Basically the film follows Merde through his capture and trail in the Japanese courts. I can't say that I loved this film, but what I can say, is that I found myself laughing throughout this absurd piece of art and... in spite of myself I couldn't take my eyes of the screen. ***7 out of 10 stars****Finally, the last film of this trio is 'Shaking Tokyo' by director Joon-ho Bong. The film centers around the bizarre Japanese phenomenon of hikikomori: people that choose to become hermits because of their inability to deal with social pressure. The film follows one such hikikomori that thinks he may have found his true love. The twist is that he must face his fears and leave his house to find her and stop her from becoming a hikikomori herself.Of the three shorts in 'Tokyo!' I liked 'Shaking Tokyo' most. I'd seen Joon-ho Bong's 'The Host' and really didn't like it, but he's won me back with this little jewel of a film. He really has a gift with taking things of cultural significance and making them interesting (Host included). The characters of 'Shaking Tokyo' are beautifully written and acted. It has more of a complete story arc than the other two films as well. And, I felt that it is the only of the three that I would have enjoyed as a full length feature film. For me this one makes 'Tokyo!' even worth having in my DVD collection. ****9 out of 10 stars*****Overall, if you're looking for a excursion into the strange, funny and thought provoking, this film is for you. There's something for everybody to like here. Also, if you enjoyed this film I'd suggest watching 'Eros' and 'Three Extremes' as well.

"Tokyo!" is a three-way with Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Joon-ho Bong, re-inventing Japans great city as modern fairy tales. Three fantasies of alienation, form into the most unique, original, and entertaining film of the year so far. Gondry is up first with an adaption from a comic book by Gabrielle Bell "Cecil & Jordan in NewYork"(surprised was I, cus its one of my favorite stories by her, I did a presentation on it and everything) here retitled as "Interior Design". The two collaborated on the screen play, and it shows in a return to form, from his last good natured but slightly flat, "Be Kind Rewind". The story is of a couple who move to Tokyo, to screen an experimental film. The director is the boyfriend, and his girlfriend is his editor, transport, and support, though he claims she lacks ambition. They are looking for an apartment, and staying with a friend in a one room apartment. The boyfriend finds a job, the girlfriend looks for an apartment, job, and place to fit in becoming more marginalized all the time, until she begins to transform into...someone useful. Shades of "The Bedsitting Room" can be found here, but Gondry's trademark visual style is in full effect, featuring some amazing special effects, and fun set designs. It asks, Is it more important to be defined by what one loves, or what one does? Caravax's segment, called "Merde" is about a creature, like an overgrown Leprechaun, who crawls up from the sewer and begins accosting random people on the streets, eating flowers and money, licking and shoving anything and anyone who crosses his path, all to the theme of the original Godzilla. Needless to say he becomes an overnight celebrity(in Japan Sada Abe became a celebrity after murdering and removing the genitals of her lover, she played herself in plays about her life after she got out of prison, and this was before WW1. Nowadays the people photograph their monsters with camera phones). The creatures rampages turn violent, in one thrilling and especially horrific scene, and he is arrested and put on trial. The reason this is the weakest of the three, is because the creature speaks a gibberish language, and during an interrogation scene, we have about five minutes of gibberish talk, not translated til the following scene, its not really funny or dramatic, just kinda tiresome and awkward like a Monty Python skit dragged out too long. Its easy to point to terrorism and racism as the grand theme here, "he's linked to Al Queda and the Aum Cult", etc, but misanthropy in general works just as well, and is in keeping with the alienation that courses through all of the stories. Denis Lavent's performance is the best in the film, he manages to make the most inhuman character real, somewhere between Gollum and a homeless paranoid schizophrenic. It's similar to an early Gondry short film actually, where Michel takes a s*%t in a public restroom and David Cross in a turd suit follows him around claiming to be his son and shouting racial slurs at passerby's, til he eventually outgrows his s%&t cocoon and emerges from it in full Nazi uniform to Gondry's dismay. On the note of rampaging monsters, the final film is from Joon-ho bong, director of "The Host", called "Shaking Tokyo" about a hermit or hikikomori as they are a called in the land of the rising sun. A man has not left his house in ten years, having only human contact in weekly visits from a pizza man, whom he never looks in the face, has his delicate life jostled when an earthquake renders an attractive pizza-girl unconscious, and he is forced into direct contact. Eventually he resolves to leave his house to find her again, only to discover, or for us to discover the world is not as we remember it. Its an painfully funny but true idea (like Mike Judge's Idiocracy), that in the future, the final frontier of a technological society will become actual face to face interactions between human beings. Any of these stories would feel at home in an issue of Mome or a Haruki Marukami book of short stories, they are vibrant, whimsical, modern fantasy, that are almost so universal in their simplicity they could be told anywhere. The movie could take place in any city really, with some tweaking, but the stories do resonate specially with Tokyo. Its the best thing I've seen in a theater this year, I was smiling continuously throughout. Its 2 hours, but it goes by like lightning. Some of the stories may seem slight at first, so entertaining, it cant but be meaningless. But this ain't the case, each director brings something unique to the table, like another under-seen triptych of recent, the Atlanta made horror film "The Signal", "Tokyo!'s" directors feel like a band, jamming together more than separate artists trying to upstage each other, like in something like "Paris Je'Taime". Funny, charming, dynamic, strange, sincere, absurd, movie making. A place of robots, amphibious mutants, monstrous trolls, magical transformations, and to quote Merde "eyes which look like a woman's sex". Two Frenchmen and a Korean, re-invent Japan the city which upgrades itself more than any other, and we are all the better for it. What a strange bright future we live in.