TOKYO!

Japan/France, 2008, 110 minutes, Colour.
Interior Design directed by Michelle Gondry.
Merde directed by Leos Carax.
Shaking Tokyo directed by Bong Joon- Ho.

One needs to notice the ! after the Tokyo of the title. This is not a film set in Tokyo as such or about Tokyo as such. It is about aspects of Tokyo!

Over a cartoon cityscape, we hear a flight hostess inviting us all to travel to Japan. There are three stories for us, three surreal stories which film buffs would expect from the directors. This is something of a cinema of the absurd.

Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Science of Sleep, Be Kind Rewind) delves into some Tokyo realism as a young couple arrive to spend some days with a friend in her very small apartment. They apartment hunt (put off from one because of a dead cat), job hunt – he gets a job putting paper on packages, she does not. He has an intellectual experimental film which he shows to business people in a porn cinema using a smoke machine for atmosphere. There are jokes about mutations at the beginning of the film – and that is what happens to the girl.

Leos Carax has made some exotically strange films in his day (Lovers of the Pont Neuf, Pola X). This one is both exotic and strange. Denis Lavant portrays a strange looking, semi-dressed man who runs around Tokyo! harassing people and then hiding in the sewers. He finds a cache of arms, especially hand-grenades and gleefully runs down many streets flinging them with abandon and not seeming to notice the mounting dead. Eventually he is arrested but no one can communicate with him except a limelight-loving eccentric French lawyer. There is more and an absurd ending – and a joke that the next episode will be in New York with a US bill and Lincoln drawn to look like the man from the sewers.

Maybe these two episodes are particularly French and need a Gallic sensibility and sense of humour to appreciate the surreal humour.

The third story is by Korean Bong Joon- Ho (The Host, Memories of Murder), more straightforward but no less absurdist. A man has lived indoors for ten years or so and has stacked all his pizza boxes, for instance, along with other packaging and books to make his apartment a neat work of art. When a young woman delivers a pizza, eye contact is made – and Tokyo shakes with an earthquake. It jolts the man to decide to go out to find the woman – only to find everybody has introverted themselves, only emerging momentarily during another tremor.

All three films are stylish and create an oddball world that audiences will find funny and/or curious.

1.Audience expectations, fulfilment, Tokyo as an occasion for stories, cinema of the absurd?

2.The introduction, the flight attendants, a flight to Japan, the comic strip images and the colour?

3.The three stories, connection or not? French sensibilities, Korean sensibilities? Japan?

4.Interior Design: the rain, the apartment and being small, the friends meeting, the car and the issue of the carpark, towing, the fine, the car being crushed? The owner of the flat, her job, friendship, hospitality, going to sleep during the film? Her guests, the film director, showing his film? The serious and pretentious nature of the film? His commenting that his girlfriend lacked ambition? The consequences of this? Apartment-hunting, small, the dead cat? Job-hunting, his getting the job packing the parcels? The screening of the film, the people’s reaction, his using the smoke machine after she had retrieved it from the garage? The girl, lack of identity, being transformed, the initial mention of the mutation theme, the effect on the girl? The absurdity? The end?

5.Merde: the man, his appearance, chasing people, living in the sewers, the information on the news, the two anchors and their propriety, their comments, the reports? The man and his molesting people, hiding in the sewers, finding the arms cache, the grenades, the explosion, throwing them and killing people, going back and sleeping, his arrest? The TV information? People unable to communicate? The lawyer from France, his histrionics, coming to Japan, posing for the media, in court, his discussions with the man? The issue of hating people, especially the Japanese? Trial, condemnation, people present for the hanging, his scratching himself, distracting them – and disappearing? The trailer for the sequel, Coming to New York, Lincoln on note looking like the man?

6.Tokyo Shakes: the man, his definition of those who stayed inside, explanation of the ten years, his life, his father sending the money, eating and standing, dreams, the toilet, the toilet rolls and the mark on his hand? The pizza boxes, stacked, the books, neat, a work of art? The girl, eye contact? Her fainting? The ’quake, the effect on the man? The next delivery, rough, presumptions and phone call? The address? His venturing out with difficulty, running, no people, the ’quake and people coming out and going back? Introversion? The girl, forcing her to go out? His future?

7.The overall effect of these three stories? Japan, Tokyo with an exclamation mark? Each of the films with the director’s personal style?