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.
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