Small Frenchmen Are Attacking Tokyo!
A bite-sized morsel from Leos Carax’s episode of TOKYO! — a compendium film that’s better than these things usually are. Denis Lavant on the rampage in the megalopolis, to the tune of the Godzilla theme, makes for arresting entertainment, in a fairly puzzling little film which veers between the hilarious, the sick, and the fairly baffling. The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw was flabbergasted, I seem to recall, having no idea what he was supposed to make of it all (a few weeks ago, he was equally baffled by PONTYPOOL). I’d say it’s a deliberately abrasive piece of nonsense poetry more based on Lavant’s genius as a physical actor than upon any desire to actually make a coherent statement about anything. Although, like the other episodes in the film, Carax’s tale explores the modern, YouTubed world of instantaneous cult celebrity and the increasingly trippy nature of the news.
Elsewhere, Michel Gondry produces his usual twee whimsical guff, which livens up when the heroine turns into a chair, and Joon-Ho Bong gives us maybe the best episode, or most solid, a love story about shut-ins and earth-quakes and pizza delivery and everything we like. But Carax scores highest on indelible moments.
shadowplay 
November 16, 2009 at 9:36 am
I preferred Michel Gondry’s segment to Joon-Ho Bong’s, which I found dull, pretentious and rambling. Carax’s had great moments, but went on too long.
The music accompanying Denis Lavant on the rampage, by the way, is Akira Ifukube’s theme from Gojira – the original 1954 Godzilla movie.
November 16, 2009 at 9:37 am
The model for the Carax episode is Barrault’s performance in Renoir’s Le Testament de Docteur Cordelier. That I think says it all. The great Japanese film critic Shigehiko Hasumi loves the Carax episode and called it one of his favourites for that year.
I’ve been a fan of Carax ever since I saw Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and Denis Lavant is something else in that movie.
November 16, 2009 at 9:43 am
I need to revisit all Carax’s early work — I was too young or too stupid to appreciate his 80s work at the time. I was consistently engaged by his film in Tokyo! and I don’t think it’s pretentious, I think it’s the opposite: a deliberately pointless shaggy dog story. There’s a similarity between the two, because both are less meaningful than they at first appear, but that’s part of the point of a shaggy dog story — by the end the audience is in on the joke.
The Dr Cordelier connection seems bang-on, both zestful physical perfs.
November 16, 2009 at 11:35 am
Don’t know much sense in talking of Carax’s “early work” since he has made only four features as of this writing. I only recently saw his first film – Boy Meets Girl shot in gleaming B+W(when he shows the insides of a pinball machine lit in monochrome it looks like the insides of a human body – the essential element in his movies), Lavant gives a restrained performance in that movie, in comparison to the other films. It’s a very cold film though quite assured and it certainly shows the Philippe Garrel influence.
One Carax movie that I haven’t yet seen but would like to is Mauvais Sang which is a science-fiction film(in the grand tradition of Alphaville) and has the Binoche-Lavant-Carax team predecessing Les Amants de Pont-Neuf.
November 16, 2009 at 11:50 am
I reviewed Mauvais Sang for the MFB. It’s SO Godardian – he even has Juliette Binoche wearing a red cardigan, like Anna Karina. Seem to recall it had great moments (there’s one of Lavant bopping along the road to Bowie) but it was too referential for my tastes.
Would like to see it again now, though, as my tastes have changed.
November 16, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Leos Carax is a wonderful maniac. I first met him when The Unbearable Lightness of Being opened. Juliette Binoch was doing the press rounds and he was following her aroudn like a small, whipped little dog. He was amazed that I knew who he was. I told him I’d been following his career sinc Boy Meets Girl. At that time he was stilll making les Amants edu Pont-Neuf — which bankrupted several studios before it was finally completed. Rightafter it was I ran into him at the Chateua Marmont (where I’d gone to interview Gus). He told me he was having a screenignat Univeral and invited me. So the first time I saw it was on an enormous screen. There was a handful of people there, the only one I recognized being Carl Reiner. (No idea whay he was there. Maybe Leos had confused him with his son.) In any event this was two years before it got a cursory American release.
POLA X (which stands for Pierre ou Les Ambiguities — 10th Draft) followed and is just as insane. Pierre, incidentallay was Jean-Pierre Grumbach’s favorite book — and is why he changed his last name to “Melville.”
November 16, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Pauvre Leos.
He was also an actor for Garrel and Godard.
November 16, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Since JLG is so restless himself, the way to follow his influence ought really to be to try and make the NEXT Godard film, rather than referencing his previous work.
But I do think Carax has his own thing going on, even if Godard is a huge influence. And I suspect that’ll be clearer looking back at the first films than it was at the time.
Well, if Mel Brooks could appreciate Lynch, maybe Carl Reiner would enjoy Carax. Maybe The Jerk was an influence on this film, who knows?
November 16, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Carax as a critic(for Les Cahiers) praised a film directed by Sylvester Stallone, I believe it was the sequel to Saturday Night Fever but as is clear in the extra for the DVD of Boy Meets Girl he is really superfond of King Vidor whom he discusses with Kent Jones in an interview at the Lincoln Film Centre(which until very recently Mr. Jones was programing).
Godard is impossible to directly imitate. Steven Soderbergh is a good example in his “experimental” films which obviously aim for that kind of self-reflexive breakaway from form + content driven cinema but falls short without finding his own voice or something equally interesting to substitute it with. Carax is making his kind of films which hearken to silent cinema or what Garrel called the New Wave film policy that “L’Atalante is the greatest film ever made.”
November 16, 2009 at 8:27 pm
The Stallone film was Paradise Alley, not Staying Alive
November 16, 2009 at 8:29 pm
His real name is Alexandre Oscar Dupont
November 16, 2009 at 8:58 pm
I think a few people thought Paradise Alley showed promise. Staying Alive is just awful, dump-truck directing.
I wonder where he got Carax from. Is it draft ten of something?
After the encouraging weirdness of Tokyo! I do hope he makes another feature soon.
November 16, 2009 at 9:12 pm
I loved to death the first 15 minutes of that Carax short… don’t know why it had to turn into a dreary courtroom drama though. He made an equally pleasurable short around the same time, a music video where the Merde character sings a song by The Kills (or was it The Killers?) translated into his own click-slap-speak.
November 16, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Didn’t mind the courtroom — it was a chance to enjoy that language. And it does lead up to the great ending.
I would watch that sequel!
November 16, 2009 at 11:04 pm
“Leos Caxax” is an anagram carved out of “Alexandre Oscar”
November 16, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Alex Oscar, yes. The “Andre” is left over, maybe he has a withered twin with that name.
October 10, 2013 at 12:07 am
The end of Koshikei, directed by Nagisa Ôshima may have something to do with M. Merde’s end….