TOKYO!

EXCLUSIVE FIRST RUN!  │ Three famously unconventional directors — two flashy Frenchmen and a South Korean counterpart — offer up an eccentric, often fantastical triptych of Tokyo-set tales in this playful, hugely entertaining omnibus film. First up is “Interior Design,” from mind warper Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep). Adapted from a comic by Gabrielle Belle, it concerns an aspiring filmmaker and his aimless girlfriend, both newly arrived in Tokyo. While they search for suitable digs, he arranges a screening of his arty sci-fi/horror opus at a porn theatre, and she undergoes a bizarre bodily transformation straight out of Cronenberg. “Merde,” the first film in ages from Cinéma du look luminary Leos Carax (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Pola X), mashes Japanese monster movie with Oshima’s Death by Hanging while offering satirical swipes at all things Japanese. Carax regular Denis Lavant plays a misshapen humanoid creature that emerges from the sewers to terrorize Tokyo. “Shaking Tokyo,” by Bong Joon-Ho, director of 2006’s giddy mutant-monster-movie hit The Host, is, surprisingly, the most restrained episode of the bunch. When a hikikomori — a recluse living in extreme isolation — makes eye contact with another human being (the pizza delivery girl) for the first time in 11 years, the results are both intimate and earth shaking. Hip, highly original, and frequently hilarious, Tokyo! premiered as an Official Selection of the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes last year. Colour, 35mm, in Japanese and French with English subtitles. 110 mins.