Tokyo!

Day 53

Film 45

Tokyo! is the collection of three short films set inside the city by three acclaimed directors, Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-ho. Each of the films is unlike anything else I have seen, and each of them is a flawed piece of art. This is the kind of film I adore, so lets get to it:

Interior Design (Gondry)

This is the story of a couple new to Tokyo. It is a subtle story ending on a twist that makes you have to think. It looks at an aspiring artist and their significant other. It defines both, although the ending becomes a bittersweet as the artist grows to create more things and the girl becomes more a tool than person.

It is endlessly strange, and is a good start as the rest of the short films because the others are even more strange.

Merde (Carax)

Definately the strangest of the bunch Merde looks at what it is to be a monster, a terrorist and to be a human being. Merde, the name of a man who is part madman, part monster, part misunderstood race, hops onto the screen in a green coat, with a strange sideways beard and a foggy eye and just starts beating up Japaneese people. It is comical and horrific. It also makes no sense in the conclusion, in a sort of sideways Jesus effect, but I cannot speak much more on that.

Shaking Tokyo (Joon-ho)

Shaking Tokyo follows a man who has spent the last ten years of his life walled off from the world by his own will. The wonder of the first half is in the meticulous set design and the regimented way the man leads his life (Very Stranger than Fiction like.) Catapulted from eye contact with a robot pizza delivery woman the shut in leaves his isolation world to find her. It is sweet and fun film with a hint of darkness hidden in its happy ending.