Tokyo! | Review

With such strong discrepancies in tonality, cinematic approaches, filmmaking aptitudes and styles, well-known filmmakers in Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-Ho come together for an almost two-hour triptych — a hotchpotch of stories featuring the confining and isolating spaces that are the make up of Japan’s capital city. Commencing with Gondry’s quirky number: think Transformers with a twist, followed by the unharmonious Carax tale of a human-like Godzilla that eats flowers and self-destructs and concluding with, a poetic, I-think-I-can journey of a man who finally stretches out into the real world, Tokyo! succeeds in becoming a hara-kiri concoction.

As he examined in The Science of Sleep, Gondry pulls from the graphic novel literary world, a story he co-wrote with girlfriend Gabrielle Bell to explore anxiety and relationship blues. Personal and physical space is a luxury in the big city, and in Interior Design, the French director reminds us that overpopulation can lead to solitudes and incompatibilities. From there we tag along for a horror show with humorous consequences – a young girl morphs into a four-legged wooden friend. As an opening narrative appetizer, the combo of humor, social commentary and surprise element sets the pic in a good prospective direction.

The sewer systems of the world are pretty much home to the same sort of creatures, but the streets of Tokyo offer a different kind of genome deformation that likes to take day trips in the city above. There couldn’t be a better title for Carax’s portion of the triple threat – Merde (French translation for the word ‘shit’) follows a modern day Nosferatu (played by an actor who has been working in the experimental for a few decades now) who goes on a rampage and ends up on trail before his father. Denis Lavant screeches wildly in gibberish in this absurdist bit apart, with an insufferable long court room sequence making the middle main course portion of the pic a difficult to digest proposition.

After his monster hit The Host, Joon-Ho visually expresses inner combustion by complementing it with a sense of hope of earthquake quiver magnitudes. The story takes place in a suburb-ish looking portion of Tokyo, but once again focuses on the secondary affects of how a densely inhabited section that asphyxiates individuality. Shaking Tokyo pairs a pizza delivery girl with a reclusive man, who hasn’t stepped outside his home years. The enchanting lure of youth ultimately pushes the man held captive by his own qualms, beyond the limits of his home, but Joon-Ho turns the tables – the outside world can indeed be threatening and in a packed city, isolation might indeed be better than a comfort blanket. As the dessert portion of the film, this is more carrot cake satisfaction than crème brule.

As a triple narrative that doesn’t place the metropolis in a radiant light, viewers will be left with the interiors dominating the storylines, — international audiences who are expecting a Paris, Je T’aime inclusion of the city will be disappointed. Though the short format certainly suits Gondry’s small in scope tale and it welcomes Boon-Ho’s soothing but yet subdued number, for Carax’s rampage piece it shows that length can be a problematic. Despite the three names behind the camera, Tokyo! will most likely fall in between the cracks.

Reviewed at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival (Section: Un Certain Regard)

May 15th 2008.

112 Minutes

Rating 1.5 stars