Film

Only one of these three anthologized shorts merits the exclamation point: Leos Carax’s slyly perverse “Merde,” a monster movie set in Japan’s frequently shell-shocked megalopolis. Godzilla himself roars radioactively on the soundtrack as shoppers flee from…an unkempt Frenchman. Disgusted citizens come to know him as the Creature from the Sewer, or Merde, with his dirty feet, curled fingernails and “insane beard.” (Film fans will identify the dude as none other than the physically brilliant Denis Lavant, of Carax’s 1991 Lovers on the Bridge.) The tale doesn’t stay benign—or that enjoyable, really—for long; there’s some unnecessary carnage and xenophobia. But this unrepentant beast finds an oasis of understanding in his attorney (Balmer, also insanely bearded), who speaks his misanthropic language.

“Merde” is a joke, a knowing one; you wish the two directors whose Tokyo-set films bookend it could also emerge from their own rectums. Alas, they are France’s Michel Gondry, he of twee diorama obsessions, and Bong Joon-ho, maker of the witty The Host but also, evidently, a closeted Rod Serling. (There’s only room in there for one Shyamalan.) Gondry’s segment is about a young woman who transforms into a piece of furniture; Bong wants to scare you with some symbolic earthquakes and the sad people who Must Come Outside to Finally Find Love. Tokyo! has no real reason for being, least of all as a city portrait. It’s disposable art-house tourism, made by filmmakers with too many festivals to attend.