Tokyo! (2008)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Directors:

Joon-ho Bong
Leos Carax

Writers:

Gabrielle Bell (graphic novel "Cecil and Jordan in New York") (segment)
Joon-ho Bong (writer)

Release Date:

16 August 2008 (Japan)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A cinematic triptych of three Tokyo-set stories.

Plot Keywords:

City Name In Title | Directed By Several Directors | One Word Title | Place Name In Title | Exclamation Point In Title

Awards:

3 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Yû Aoi	...	Pizza-Delivery Girl (segment "Shaking Tokyo")
YosiYosi Arakawa	...	Man running from his home (segment "Shaking Tokyo")
Jean-François Balmer	...	Maître Voland (segment "Merde")
Julie Dreyfus
Ayako Fujitani	...	Hiroko (segment "Interior Design")
Ayumi Ito	...	Akemi (segment "Interior Design")
Teruyuki Kagawa	...	Man (segment "Shaking Tokyo")
Ryo Kase	...	Akira (segment "Interior Design")
Denis Lavant	...	Merde' (segment "Merde")
Yutaka Matsushige
Nao Omori	...	Hiroshi (segment "Interior Design")
Sohee Park	...	A guy in the movie theater
Naoto Takenaka	...	Pizza-Delivery Man (segment "Shaking Tokyo")
Satoshi Tsumabuki	...	Takeshi (segment "Interior Design")
Hiroshi Yamamoto

Also Known As:

Dokkyo! (South Korea)
Tokyo! (Hong Kong: English title)

Runtime:

112 min

Country:

France | Japan | Germany | South Korea

Language:

Japanese | French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital | DTS

Certification:

Singapore:M18 | South Korea:15 | Switzerland:14 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:14 (canton of Vaud) | Hong Kong:IIB | France:U | UK:15 | USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

Kugayama, Tokyo, Japan

Company:

Comme des Cinémas

Movie Connections:

Spoofs Gojira (1954)

Soundtrack:

Tokyo Town Pages

For Carax lovers, a must . . . Gondry OK, Joon-ho-Bong a bust

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.