Photo courtesy of collider.com

'Tokyo!' novellas bring innovative story lines

By: Antoine Beamon

Posted: 4/7/09

Tokyo! is indicatively a brilliant piece of cinematic gold that is to be experienced by all foreign film lovers.

This incredible movie gives you three distinct stories based in Tokyo. Three different directors were responsible for the stories that made up this movie, Michel Gondry (Be Kind Rewind), Joon Ho Bong (The Host) and Leos Carax (Pola X).

The first story "Interior Design" by Michel Gondry is about a young couple that moves to the big city of Tokyo to pursue their dreams. Arika (Ryo Kase) is an aspiring filmmaker with big aspirations of filming a good movie in the big city. As for his girlfriend Hiroko (Ayako Fujitani), she is not sure what she wants to do with her life.

Things become tense after the couple over stay's their welcome in their friend's tiny apartment. On top of that, Arika and Hiroko began to drift apart as Arika's movie starts to take off in Tokyo. This affects Hiroko so much, that she begins to transform into something non-human.

The second story, "Merde," directed by Leos Carax is an intoxicating story about a sewer dwelling mutant (Denis Lavant) that lives under the streets of Tokyo. This monster begins terrorizing the people of Tokyo by using an assortment of methods, such as stealing people's money and eating it, scaring old women and licking school girls on the street.

The line is drawn when the monster finds grenades in the sewers and starts blowing people up. The government finds the sewer dweller and tries him in a court. But there is a major problem this mysterious mutant speaks a stranger language that no one can understand.

The Japanese government finds French lawyer, Maiter Voland (Jean-Francois Balmer), who is only person who understands this creature's language. During his trial, he is then sentenced to death by hanging. But an unsuspecting event takes place during his so-called death.

The final story is "Shaking Tokyo," directed by Bong Joon-ho. This interesting and quite delightful story is about a man that is a "hikikiomori," a Japanese term that means socially impaired. Teruyuki Kagawa has been afraid to leave his house for 10 years, he orders everything via telephone and when people deliver food he never looks them in their eyes.

A shocking turn of events transpires when a pizza delivery girl comes over and passes out during an earthquake. Teruyuki soon falls in love with the woman, but after seeing how he lives she too becomes a hikikiomori. Teruyuki finally relinquishes his fear and leaves his house so he can find his true love, before another earthquake ravages the city.

"Tokyo!" was an amazing movie. I was not too trilled with the first story due to it being a little boring at times, but the other two stories were great. The way this movie painted the pictures of these stories in Tokyo, it was a brilliant feat of work done by these three different directors.

It is easy to identify yourself with all the different characters and become immersed in their struggles. Unfortunately, this movie is only showing in select cities as of now. I hope it will hit theaters nationwide sooner than later.