Two French filmmakers and a Korean filmmaker present playfully apocalyptic, futuristic tales of Tokyo life. New York-based Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) offers "Interior Design," about Akira (Ryo Kase) and Hiroko (Ayako Fujitani), young lovers scouring Tokyo for a cheap apartment. This Kafkaesque story follows an aspiring filmmaker and his insecure girlfriend through a series of grim apartments: one is bug infested, one is a tiny pod with a porthole, one features a dead cat on the floor. The couple's relationship is strained, in part because Hiroko doesn't have a job, and Akira's budding film career is stunted by his lack of talent. Gondry's usual poMo psychedelia is used to great effect when Hiroko wakes up metamorphosed. Leos Carax (The Lovers on the Bridge) works here with his usual lead actor, the oddly compelling comic genius Denis Lavant. In "Merde," Lavant plays a white-eyed, green-suited creature from the sewers, who pops out of manholes to harass and needle Tokyo pedestrians. The creature grabs people's cigarettes and puts them out in baby carriages, lurches around, and eventually, begins to lob grenades at a terrified public. Once he's captured, his subterranean lair is revealed as a site for underground graffiti about Japanese atrocities during WWII. "Shaking Tokyo," by South Korean director Bong Joon-ho (The Host) investigates the hikikomori phenomenon, in which young Japanese men become hermits, living in their bedrooms for years, playing videogames and subsisting on takeout. In this stunted romance, a chance meeting with a like-minded pizza delivery girl pushes a young man to finally exit his room and venture out into Tokyo. In Japanese and French with English subtitles. more at tokyo-movie.jp 35mm
2009, color, 1 hour 52 minutes, France/Japan