Three Cinematic Perspectives on a Dreary Yet Diverting Tokyo

Tokyo is not an appealing city, according to director Michel Gondry. “It is a more oppressive city. They were all very anxious to know what we think of them.”

Tokyo!, a collaboration of three unique films by French directors Gondry, Leos Carax, and Korean director Bong Joon-ho, forces viewers into fantasy worlds that exhibit the bleakness of urbanity. The film opens Friday in select theaters, and Gondry and Carax sat down last week to talk about their work. Like 2006’s Paris, je t’aime, Tokyo! examines how cities can alter our conceptions of life.

Gondry perpetuates the brilliance of his work on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Interior Design, a Kafka-esque tale of remarkable transformation with an unexpected, yet very Gondry-like twist. His protagonist, a young, uninspired Japanese woman who moves to Tokyo, embodies oppression as she struggles to make herself useful.

While the film’s short duration slightly limits Gondry’s creativity, his editing and cinematography skills are a marvel. His sensational technique favors in-camera effects and though he had to use CGI for a remarkable metamorphosis that takes place in the film, he maintains that making easy effects digitally “can only go wrong. It’s simple and you get accidents when you shoot in-camera that makes it interesting.” Even if Gondry did not necessarily like the city, he stayed true to his artistic vision, and depicted it faithfully through his own lens.

Leos Carax’s Merde is much messier. “I had to make a masterpiece out of shit,” he declared. Denis Lavant plays the grotesque creature, Merde—French for “shit”—who lives in the sewers and terrorizes Tokyo’s citizens. Although hilarious, Monsieur Merde aptly reflects modern society’s flaws and blindness in the face of fear and offense.

Though intriguing in concept and execution, Merde is the least remarkable film of the three. “I had no special interest in Tokyo,” Carax explained. The film, a modern allegory of fundamentalism and racism, loses its focus early on. Had he only achieved cohesiveness between the multiple languages spoken in the film and the editing, Merde could have laid bare society’s inadequacies.

For Carax, Merde represents a terror whose effects are eternally present. He even left the possibility of a Merde in NYC segment open-ended—“Maybe I’ll confront him with a woman. Go up to Fashion Week, and kidnap Kate Moss, and take her to the sewers.”

Bong Joon-ho, director of The Host, took a simpler, futuristic approach to Tokyo. Shaking Tokyo relies heavily on the introspective, striking performance of Teruyuki Kagawa, who plays a shut-in or hikikomori. When an earthquake and a delivery girl shake his world, the hikikomori takes a leap of faith and steps outside, only to find Tokyo as desolate as his apartment. It is a soaring statement of the remoteness anyone can feel despite being in a city of millions.

Tokyo! merely catalyzes these three directors’ fantasies. This film is not only worthwhile because the trinity epitomizes the creative filmic minds of our future, but because it can simultaneously uplift a student’s spirits. Instead of angsting over schoolwork, take the afternoon off, venture into the city, and escape to Tokyo!

Tokyo! is playing at Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema at 143 E. Houston St. (between First and Second avenues). Tickets are $12.50. Michel Gondry and Leos Carax will appear at selected screenings this weekend.