Omnibus films are always a tricky type of film to make wholly rewarding for the audience. You may react well to all of the segments or perhaps only one. Cue in the ambitious project Tokyo!, taking three non-Japanese directors and getting them to make a film about Tokyo. Starting with Michel Gondry's Interior Design we follow a young couple trying to plant roots in the sprawling metropolis and trying to overcome the obstacles ensuing. The boyfriend is trying to find his way into the film industry and is screening his film at a Pink film theatre. Knowing what we know about so many Japanese directors getting their start in Pink Cinema I'd say he's halfway there. Still, he must get a job gift wrapping presents to help make ends meet until things get going. The girlfriend on the other hand isn't having as good a time. She didn't get the gift wrapping job and her friends are starting to talk about her even though she is on the other side of a book shelf in her BFFs very small apartment. Interior Design for the most part is wonderfully mystical and magical yet grounded in human emotion. The true form of Gondry's visual creativity really shows up in the last 10 minutes of his film. It is a joy to watch the story unfold.

Leos Carax's Merde may prove to be the more challenging of trio to watch and come up with a definition for. A wild man emerges from the sewers of Tokyo and disrupts the people walking down the street. He steals cigarettes, he eats flowers, he licks a young girl's armpit and retreats back into the sewers. His presence alarms the city and instills terror in the people. The man who calls himself Merde takes it even further after finding a stock of WWII grenades and he emerges once more and lets fly with the little pineapple bombs. The second half of Carax's short follows the court case against him and discovers his motivation and reasoning for his reign of terror on the Japanese people. This is where Carax's short starts to drag and become wholly uninteresting and didn't engage with me at all. It only dawned on me afterwards what Carax was doing could be interpreted as his own vision of Godzilla. Maybe? Think about it though. He uses Godzilla theme music throughout his film and the first time we see Merde he is dressed in a green suit. He creates havoc amongst the Japanese people and blames them for his creation. Coincidence? Yeah probably.

Bong Joon-ho's Shaking Tokyo could perhaps be summarized as a challenge to the people of Tokyo to wake from their conservative lives, that they need a good shaking. Regardless, it is also a beautifully shot piece with a couple familiar faces thrown in for cameo roles. I won't divulge who because part of the fun in watching these films is discovering those faces. Bong's film focuses on one man, a hikikomori, a recluse from society who has locked himself away from society for ten years. Not only has he locked himself away from society but cut off most sensory connections that bring life to anyone. It is the random connection between himself and a beautiful pizza delivery girl that awakens these emotions again, emotions he once thought to be bad, and to live again. And so after a lengthy absence from the real world he steps back out into it so he may save someone from making the same mistake he did.