Toyko!
Directed by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, Bong Joon-Ho At Landmark Sunshine Cinema Running Time: 112 min.
Does the new omnibus movie Tokyo! (three shorts by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-Ho) stack-up next to the great omnibus tradition? Not much. Omnibus films were a staple of the 1960s European art movie boom: RoGoPaG, Love and Anger, Spirits of the Dead and others showed off major directors who, even when tossing off caprices, made masterpieces. The best example is Boccaccio ‘70, a 1962 release of short films by Fellini,Visconti and De Sica that looked forward to cinema’s future (recently released on No Shame DVD).
But Tokyo! presents a generation of filmmakers who succumb to sodden, dull, solipsistic hipsterism—not the life force of Boccaccio ‘70 or even 2007’s Paris, Je T’aime. It’s three tardy tourists’ view of Sofia Coppola’s Japan. In the opener, Interior Design, Gondry proves he’s not getting better. After a Blade Runner–style rainy
intro, the jokey tale of a girl who becomes a chair is not only
depressing but also lacks the bright colors of Gondry’s music
videos—especially his realtime, split-screen Japan-set Cibo Matta
classic “Sugar Water.”The bookend, Bong’s Shaking Tokyo, finds a girl and a (hikikomori) hermit love story during the interstices of three earthquakes.Yawn.
Carax’s Merde is
the only visually and conceptually interesting short.This urban fable,
about a feral Frenchman (Carax’s acrobatic alter-ego Denis Lavant) who
emerges from the bowels of the Ginza to throw anarchist/terrorist
bombs, has a genuine Surrealist spirit. Merde ponders the post-9/11 zeitgeist with grim, funny enigmas about instinct, law, language and genre-movie silliness. It’s a film to pair with Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz. Carax never fails to impress.
