Tokyo!

An international bunch of producers chose three top indie directors to create short films set in Tokyo! Such compendiums are the movie equivalent of a collection of short stories by different writers. In theory, they serve to display the ideas and techniques of different artists. In practice, it's hard to find logical reasons for doing so.

Michel Gondry is a French musician who had triumphs in the US (Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine, Be Kind Rewind) following a top-rated career there making commercials. Leos Carax is also French, had two early successes (Boy Meets Girl, Bad Blood) and two big flops (Lovers on the Bridge, Pola X). Joon-ho Bong (Korean) was best-known for Host (until he made Mother in 2009).

Why them? Presumably because they had timely spaces in their work schedules. They do not share cinematic styles and their short films have no clear thematic approach (as there were in metropolitan movie anthologies set in NYC and Paris).

Gondry co-adapted a tale originally set in New York, showing how an indie film director's girlfriend finds purpose in life by turning into a wooden chair. Cute idea = cute title: Interior Design. Carax imagined a one-eyed Jesus-like freak emerging murderously from the city's sewers. Gross idea = gross title: Merde. Bong went into the house and mind of an urban recluse (with its own modern Japanese nomenclature, hikikomori) who re-joins the world after 11 years when he makes contact with his pizza delivery girl during an earth tremor (Shaking Tokyo).

It's possible, but pointless, to identify motifs such as loneliness, self-awareness, urban isolation and pressure. They appear dominant, almost malevolent forces in the vast organised chaos of Tokyo, in its neat narrow lanes and cramped living spaces, its human anthill of polite non-connecting citizens. Admirably, the trio of directors did take their audiences into the city's back streets, away from the cliche-ed urban images, most effectively in Bong's mildly futuristic vision of a Tokyo where everyone's a recluse and pizzas are delivered by robots.

They record moments that help an outsider recall or imagine Japanese quirks, good and bad from origami packaging artistry to apartment storage rituals, racist fears to male chauvinism. But they do not add up to an overview of a city that warrants an exclamatory title.