Japan is a crazy place. Forget all the ridiculous stuff you’ve read on the internet; if Tokyo! is to be believed, the land of the rising sun is full of shape-shifting women, psychopathic sewer-dwelling troll creatures, and millions of people who lock themselves inside their homes for decades at a time.
Tokyo! is an anthology of three short films, each set in the titular city, each by a different director. The first, “Interior Design,” directed by Michel Gondry, centers on a young, penniless couple (Hiroko and Akira) that moves from the countryside to the de-facto capital. The two attempt to start a new life in the big city, as Akira, an aspiring filmmaker, takes a job in a department store as a gift wrapper while Hiroko begins to feel lost and useless, unable to find an affordable apartment or a suitable job. Gondry’s contribution is the most poignant and realistic of the three stories, with a delightfully bizarre, Kafka-esque ending.
The next short, “Merde” by French director Leos Carax, documents the life of a fiendish red-haired creature inhabiting the Tokyo sewers, occasionally popping out of a manhole to terrorize unwitting Japanese. When the creature, who goes by the name Merde (“shit” in French), is finally caught, a media circus ensues, and the monster is put on trial. Carax’s short film maniacally veers back and forth between terrifying and comical. Seeing the monster, played Denis Lavant, with his creepy mannerisms and made-up language rife with garbled nonsense and wild body movements is a treat, but by the end of the creature’s trial, it’s unclear what the point of it all was. The film ends up as the weak link in Tokyo!, too preoccupied with being strange to develop into something meaningful.
Korean director Bong Joon-Ho presents the last short, “Shaking Tokyo.” The film centers on the life of a Hikikomori, a reclusive shut-in. The protagonist, whose light-hearted narration holds the story together, has stayed indoors for almost 11 years, his apartment neatly stacked with a decade’s worth of used pizza boxes, toilet paper rolls, and water bottles. However, a mysterious pizza delivery girl breaches his fortress of solitude, forcing the love-struck Hikikomori into the outside world in search of her.
The only unifying elements of the three stories in Tokyo! are, seemingly, the backdrop of Tokyo and the quirkiness of Japanese culture. Gondry’s film is most successful at using this setting to its fullest, his characters inhabiting a dingy, cramped, yet oddly charming Tokyo. Indeed, Tokyo! is a worthwhile watch, if only for “Interior Design” and the fire-crotched, shit-stained monster.
