By Lucia Santiago Dantes
El Kiosko Magazine
www.elkioskomagazine.com
What do you get when you mix Gondry, Carax and Joon-Ho? You get Tokyo!.
Although Tokyo! opened at Cannes Film Festival on the section “Un Certain Regard” I saw it at VIFF2008, becoming immideatly one of my personal favorites. Based on the question “Do we shape a city or does the city shapes us?” Tokyo is a tryptic of 3 fantastic, surrealistic and most extraordinary short films I’ve seen lately. It is not the first time this kind of efford it is made, let’s take New York Stories (1989) or Paris Je t’aime (2006) just to mention some, but none of them with quite a premise! 3 of the most avant garde directors reunited are quite a feist for the connoiseur! like surrealistic utopic and dreamer Michael Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (2004), The science of Sleep (2006) Be kind Rewind (2008) ), provoking Leos Carax (Pola X) and monster-horror movie director Bong Joon Ho (The Host,2008).
Tokyo!'s "Interior Design"Tokyo! opens with Michael Gondry’s short film “Interior Design” it is the epitome of surrealism. Arika, An aspiring filmmaker and Hiroko, his girlfriend moves to Tokyo. We see and live the story through Hiroko’s point of view. She’is the one who scores a place to stay (for the moment) at a friend’s apartment while arriving to pricy Tokyo. But their limited budget is good enough only for trashed apartments and maigre food. Hiroko finds a job wrapping gifts at a department store, soon the stress and pressure of the big city sink into her deep thoughts, questioning her own relationship with Akira. Hiroko realizes she is changing, but her change is not only psychological but also physical: Hiroko is turning little by little into a Chair!.
Merde is the short film directed by Leos Carax.
Tokyo!'s "Merde"From Tokyo sewers, An humanoid emerges. He doesn’t speak japanese, english, french or any common language. Merde looks like a leaprechaun dressed in green, angry, violent and scaring people where ever he appears. He appears and dissapears unexpectedly. In a way it’s an analogy of the marginal people a highly densed city produce, like drug addicts, bumps, homeless, etc. It is a very whimsical, odd but very interesting story.
Tokyo!'s "Shaking Tokyo" Director Bong Joon-Ho delivers the last proposal with the short film “Shaking Tokyo” where Joon-Ho leaves behind his monsters to show us a very captivating story about a hikikomori (name for the strange behaviour where a person decides to live in total isolation from the world) played by Teruyuki Kagawa, this man hasn’t been outside his apartment for 10 years. He receives money to support his living from his parents, and the only contact through the outside world is by telephone where he orders all what he needs for his house, food and supplies. One day his way of living is disrupted by a pizza girl and an earthquake. The girl happens to have several buttons in her body representing emotions and some other physical states.
The 3 movies are almost breath taking, dealing with emotions, feelings and thoughts about what is to love in our times, in big but great cities and also subconcious and very concious concerns for those we live in metropolis, as it is proposed by the 3 movies: as human beings living in a strange form of captivity, we live in constant tranformation, anarchy and rebirth.
For more shows and venues please visit the official site:
http://www.tokyothemovie.com
