'Tokyo!' review

Ayako Fujitani and Ryo Kase (Credit: Liberation)

Quick: one guess as to which pop megalopolis is the inspiration for this triad of short films. The titular Japanese city serves as both character and backdrop for a series of fantastical vignettes, and hooey, are they fantastical: A young woman moves to the city with her boyfriend, only to discover that her lack of ambition is slowly turning her into something...wooden. A leprechaun-ish creature (in green, to boot) rises from the sewers to wreak havoc on hysterical city folk. And a sullen hermit who hasn't left his house for a decade gets all shook up—literally—after making a connection with a pizza-delivery girl. Must've been one rockin' pizza.

The buzz: The directors are reason enough to be curious. The unlikely ménage a trois includes magic-realist Michel Gondry ("Be Kind Rewind"), art-house fave Leos Carax ("Pola X") and subversive satirist Bong Joon-Ho ("The Host").

The verdict: What strange bedfellows indeed. Taken as a whole, the film is obtuse and befuddling, with head-scratching moments bursting with atmosphere and visual wit, but also coming across as self-serving creative excursions, like inside jokes you can't quite ride. Whether it's the woman beginning to transform or the madcap creature blowing things up, the result isn't "ah!" It's a resounding "eh?" The film's saving grace arrives in the last installment, about the pizza-loving recluse. The talented Bong Joon-Ho directs with moody restraint, confidently painting the screen with silence and empty space and creating a memorable character study on alienation and isolation.

Did you know: Bong Joon-Ho's 2006 film "The Host," about an amphibian monster that terrorizes his native South Korea, is that country's high-grossing film, eventually making the rounds of film festivals from Cannes to Toronto to New York.

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