A Monkey Movie Report

Sometimes a film comes along that reaffirms your love of movies. For me, this film is one of those films: I usually find films about a city to be self indulgent pieces of crap to be avoided at all costs. I could care less how much Woody Allen wants to fuck NYC or how Paris makes pasty British film directors jizz in their jeans. But when I saw that Michel Gondry was attached to this film I knew I had to at least give this movie a fair shake.

I was not disappointed.

Gondry's portion is in my opinion the high point of the movie but the other directors portions are definitely worth seeing. The film opens with Gondry's tale of a young woman who feels like she's in the way and on her way to becoming part of the scenery. So she does what any other woman in her position would do, she turns herself into a chair when other humans are around and she ends up in the apartment of a young male who takes good care of her. It's a trippy tale that's very entertaining.

I wasn't familiar with the work of Leos Carax and after seeing his story about a feral almost subhuman man who lives in the Tokyo sewer system and who comes out only to terrorize Japanese people because he hates them because in his mind they are too clean and too ugly I may have to search out other films he's directed. This one is a strange tale with an odd ending.

And finally Bong's improbable tale of two hardcore agoraphobics is a sweetly touching and fitting end to this movie about odd people in Tokyo.

I recommend this film highly.