Simply A Masterpiece

How sad is this?

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Tokyo! Is comprised of 3 very purely and exaggeratedly visual surreal tales about some sort of phenomenon in the titular city, each injected with quirky, silly humor and uncompromising sadness. We never know where any of them is going or when they will come to a close, and most of the time, that's what makes them so good. Truth be told, when all is said and done, these are three of the most inventively made and engrossing short films I've seen in quite awhile. So why are they all one movie? Why was Tokyo needed to tell these stories? Do these films reflect actual aspects of modern Tokyo? What makes these 3 separate films inextricably linked thus necessitating that they all be one? Michel Gondry's Interior Design, a just barely more conventional tale, features two young lovers new in Tokyo, who experience personal and physical transformations during the despair of apartment-hunting. It abounds with Gondry's usual trick photography and manipulation of set design, though it finds a sympathetic and guileless note in its attention to these two slackers, who are products of the new generation, the spoiled, emotionally immature but liberal and culturally cultivated bunch of bums we are.The best of the three is Merde, the centerpiece by Leos Carax. If you have never before seen a Carax film, start with Tokyo! Because Merde is utterly the most bewilderingly odd, completely goofy little movies you will ever see. Might even take the cake. What makes it so incredibly good is how it isn't just a gag film, but actually subjects us to mood swings. We find the whole thing a riot, but we get seriously absorbed in its turns as eerie, suspenseful and adventurous. I can't talk about the plot, even though a simple logline wouldn't be much of a giveaway---the first shot is a long dolly track that pretty much sums up what I would say, which is a doozy---but just let the intrigue string you along and let Merde blindside you. But let me also say that Tokyo, though it is of course a part of the plot, is the least of our focus.Shaking Tokyo, directed by Bong Joon-ho, who helmed the astounding Korean monster movie The Host, is about a hikikomori, a type so familiar the Japanese have a name for it. A hikikomori, usually male, decides to stay inside one day and essentially never leaves. Some have been reported as hermits for up to 10 years, living mostly on pizza deliveries. Joon-ho's closing segment is certainly the anthology's most heartfelt piece.I suppose Tokyo! is guilty of nothing New York Stories or Paris Je T'aime aren't, but I guess New York Stories at least contained stories that could only work the way they did if they took place in NYC, and each of the three directors on that project were born and bred New Yorkers whose films are famous for living and breathing the city. My issue with anthology films in general, whether their content is good or not, is that they feel so jagged, incoherent, hit-or-miss, being the product of multiple directors with multiple visions and unrelated stories. Why can't Interior Design, Shaking Tokyo, and Merde especially, be celebrated as stand-alone works? I feel they more than deserve it.

Tokyo! is different things to different people. Everyone that sees the movie will see each foreigners artistic portrayal of different aspects of Tokyo living and life in a very different manner.I wont go into each scene detail, enough people have done that here. What I will say is I've lived in Tokyo for some time and each segment struck a chord in me in one way or another.If you have never been to Tokyo, or even to Japan, each segment might confuse you for various reasons.I will say that each segment truly did capture a very different aspect of Tokyo and Japanese life in a way that I've yet to see in any other movie about modern Tokyo.The only thing I will say about each short was that the ending for all seemed lacking, unfulfilled, and as if there should have been more there at the end. However, even with *my own personal feelings* of the endings being lacking, that in itself also caught its own part of Tokyo as well.In my opinion, its definitely a movie for those of us who enjoy or experienced Tokyo, or Japanese lifestyles, in one way or another.However, it was absolutely not what I was expecting at all from this movie!

At the outset I have to say that Leos Carax made 2 of my 10 favorite films (LES AMANTS DU PONT-NEUF and POLA X) so he's the primary reason I went to see TOKYO! I always try to avoid reading reviews before I see any film, but somewhere along the line (it has taken forever for TOKYO! to get an American release) I somehow managed to learn the bare bones plot line of Carax's MERDE contribution to TOKYO! beforehand. I wish I hadn't, as it definitely detracted from my overall enjoyment of the piece, but Carax's film sense -- which to me is one of the purest, most thrilling and most soaring in all of cinema -- still kept me enthralled. I found myself smiling throughout most of MERDE -- not just because of its humorous aspects, but with sheer joy at Carax's (as usual) often breathtaking visuals and the satisfaction felt in letting myself go along with a real artist's vision no matter where it takes me. On first viewing I'd say that MERDE could benefit from some slight pruning, and I wish the budget had been higher to enable Carax to go all out in MERDE's principal set piece (anyone who has seen MERDE will know the part I'm talking about). Lest you think, as some reviewers here have said, that MERDE is slight and one-note, rest assured there is plenty to chew on in the way of interpreting what MERDE has to say about the world today. And, needless to say, it is my favorite segment of TOKYO!Michel Gondry's INTERIOR DESIGN comes in second. I have never seen any of Gondry's other films, and I'm glad that I didn't know anything about INTERIOR DESIGN before I saw it. The film veers sharply into a strange and melancholy place at one point and the less you know about it the better off you will be. And I pray you will be spared the presence of a "hip" audience member like we had to endure tonight at the film's NYC premiere at the Alliance Francaise who laughed uproariously at the segment's sharp left turn and nearly succeeded in ruining it for us.Joon-ho-Bong's SHAKING TOKYO ends the film and is the weakest segment by far. This supposedly tender tale is overblown and overstated in just about every way and I couldn't wait for it to end. When the hero (quite literally) pushes the heroine's buttons, I wanted to gag at the heavy-handed symbolism which all but destroys whatever legitimate point about alienation that the segment seems to be trying to make.

I saw this at FantasticFest 2008. This collection of strange tales is interesting. "Interior Design" I love Gondry's style, & his entry was enjoyable as expected - a girl feels she's lost her purpose in life, & changes accordingly. Great effect of her gradual transformation."Shaking Tokyo" Well done film - after 10 years indoors, a recluse man decides to go outside for the love of a recluse woman. Mostly narrated with thoughts of the man who has been cooped up too long. An interesting character piece, well acted and shot."Merde" This film starts off strong with an incredible opening sequence of continuous action for about 1/4 of a mile in the city, but when the character gets caught the story becomes a tiresome trial that no one understands, because there is lengthy "dialogue" in a fake language with no subtitles. could have benefited from being 10 minutes shorter.