Tokyo!

Omnibus films are uneven almost by definition, but the idea of letting one Korean and two French directors loose in Tokyo was a pretty good one. Michel Gondry, working with Gabrielle Bell on the story she originally set in New York, starts out in sitcom territory: a randy young 'artist' and his girlfriend arrive in Tokyo on a very rainy night and soon face the challenge of finding places to live and park the car. But the episode delicately mutates into something darker: a surreal allegory of the collapse of the girl's confidence and sense of self-worth.

Bong Joon-Ho (director of Memories of Murder and The Host) focuses on two quintessentially Japanese phenomena – earthquakes and hikikomori, those individuals who lead 'shut-in' lives, shunning human contact – to construct a wonderfully original love story. A young man who never leaves his anally retentive home makes his first eye-contact in eleven years with the strange young woman who delivers his pizza one Saturday. Finding her again entails summoning up the courage to venture out on to the mysteriously empty streets of the city… Not exactly a primer in Japanese studies, but tremors of desire will never seem the same again.
Tony Rayns