Tokyo!

Will this triptych from directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-ho rekindle the strange subgenre of multipart movies about capitals of world culture (see also Paris, Je T’aime and New York Stories) or finally kill it off? In any case, and acknowledging that far stranger artifacts have come out of Japan, there’s some pretty freaky diplomacy going on here. Consider these three directors’ respective protagonists: a young filmmaker’s girlfriend who finds her purpose as a piece of furniture; a deviant sewer-dwelling lunatic who becomes a media sensation; and a recluse who falls in love, at first sight, with his pizza-delivery girl during an earthquake. That last segment is the best and most poetically forceful of the lot—worth waiting for, even if the spotty others seem to suggest otherwise.