TOKYO!
The Story:
Michel Gondry's "Interior Design": A young couple -- Hiroko and Akira (Ayako Fujitani and Ryo Kase) who have just moved to Tokyo, struggling to find an apartment, jobs, and generally to start their new lives. Akira's an aspiring filmmaker-artist, hence a bit of a space case, while his girlfriend Hiroko is smart but directionless. While getting started in Tokyo, they bunk up with a friend in her absurdly tiny apartment. Gradually, Hiroko pulls away from Akira and, she suddenly has the ability to shift from human to chair form and back. As a chair, she becomes part of the furnishings in a stranger's home, and feels herself an object of value, something she lacked as a human being.
Joon-ho Bong's "Shaking Tokyo": A recluse (Teruyuki Kagawa) who's holed himself up in his apartment for 10 years. His only contact with the outside world is via his telephone, through which orders groceries and take-out pizza. When he falls in love with the pizza delivery girl, the recluse decides to break his self-imposed isolation, and sets out across Tokyo to find her. But the Tokyo that he steps into is a strangely desolate urban landscape -- the outer world has come to mirror the inner world -- as citizens have sealed themselves into their own private universes and happy-faced robots perform the task of maintaining the city. It's also a world punctuated by earthquakes, premonitions of disaster and death against which the love between the recluse and the pizza girl is the only talisman. Strikingly filmed, Bong infuses a dreamy, sullen mood to express the alienation of modern Tokyo, all unfolding against the ever-present reality of natural disaster murmuring in the background.
Leos Carax' "Merde": A subterranean troll-like humanoid (Denis Lavant) who becomes a media sensation after he emerges from his sewer-home and begins harassing and killing Tokyo citizens. The troll dubbed Merde (French for "shit")is captured but, turns out, his oddball, simian grunting can only be understood by an equally oddball French attorney (Jean-François Balmer) who insists on defending Merde in a circus-like trial in which issues of Japan's xenophobia are obtusely explored. Self-consciously wry, "Merde" reaches for big themes on the absurdity of the news media, Japan's pop culture, the fear of the "other," and something about communication and language.
Starring:
Yû Aoi, YosiYosi Arakawa, Jean-François Balmer, Julie Dreyfus, Ayako Fujitani, Ayumi Ito, Teruyuki Kagawa, Ryo Kase, Denis Lavant, Yutaka Matsushige, Nao Omori, Sohee Park, Naoto Takenaka, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Hiroshi Yamamoto
Directed By:
Joon-ho Bong, Leos Carax, Michel Gondry
Release:
2009
Watch the Trailer:
