NYLON - March 2009 - (Page 170) urban planning directors michel gondry, leos carax, and bong joon-ho explore life in toyko!, their collaboration about menacing monsters and existential ennui in the eastern city of lights. by mallory rice. illustration by christina k. WHEN MICHEL GONDRY, Leos Carax, and Bong Joon-ho screened Tokyo! at the Cannes Film Festival last May, it was the first time the directors saw their collaboration—a collection of three short films shot in the Japanese capital—in its entirety. The concept of Tokyo! might suggest similarities to the city-centric film Paris Je T’aime (as well as its forthcoming sequel, New York, I Love You), but a closer look reveals a more experimental, free-spirited approach by each director, who each executed his own installment separately. Rather than compose an effusive love letter, Gondry, Carax, and Joon-ho have crafted a poignant commentary about what life is like in Tokyo—and when pieced together, the whole is quietly observational, imaginative, and often very funny. Gondry’s Interior Design, the first of the trio, tells the story of aspiring filmmaker Akira and his girlfriend, Hiroko, who move to Tokyo together. After a screening of Akira’s work garners critical acclaim, the couple begins to drift apart, and Hiroko’s lack of ambition is suddenly under scrutiny. The story takes a curious turn at this point, as Gondry applies a Kafkaesque scenario to his familiar surrealist style: Hiroko’s body parts morph one by one, until she becomes a wooden chair. The theme of urban loneliness has inspired many a work of art, and the second and third films also offer unique takes on the concept. “I got my first vision of [the main character] Merde one bad day as I was walking alone,” says Carax. “I imagined somebody—myself?—springing out from a manhole, breaking into the crowds, and shooting everyone down in his path.” So, his film, Merde—yes, it means “shit” in French—finds the titular subterranean-sewer-creature (played by Denis Levant, who also appeared in Carax’s popular film The Lovers on the Bridge) wreaking havoc by parading down the streets terrorizing, taunting, and sometimes even licking those in his path. The final film, Joon-Ho’s Shaking Tokyo, is a quieter story about a hikikomori (a Japanese term referring to the social phenomenon of extremely reclusive people) who has not left home in 10 years. The man receives everything he needs to survive in his cramped apartment through various delivery services. His circumstances change, though, when a beautiful pizza-delivery girl, frightened by an earthquake, faints on his doorstep. “I noticed that people in Tokyo try very hard not to talk to anybody while they are walking on the streets—they kind of shrink,” explains Joon-Ho. “I wanted to take that to an extreme.” Few, if any, of the major cities in the world are as dynamic as Tokyo is—its population alone is expected to reach the 13 million mark as early as this year. The locale is an almost unassailable subject to treat as a whole, and the snapshots the filmmakers have taken, inspired by specific elements of the city, seem a much more palatable choice. “Some people feel that cities like Tokyo don’t have pasts, but I think there are two levels of past,” says Gondry. “There is the past that is the city’s history, and then there is the past of our history as an individual. And that is, in a way, more nostalgic to me.”
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