Gondry's INTERIOR DESIGN, depicts Hiroko and Akira, an aimless artistic couple who overstay their welcome in a friend's tiny apartment. Their illusions about finding success in Tokyo are gradually dissolved by the reality checks of their abysmal apartment search, some severe parking violations, and an embarrassing screening of Akira's shoddy debut film. Hiroko’s antidote for her disappointment is to forcibly fluctuate the boundaries between reality and her perception, which ultimately results in an unusual transformation.

MERDE, Carax's contribution, is the most memorable of the trio, but also the least successful. Denis Lavant plays a grotesque miscreant who periodically emerges from the sewers to terrorize the city. The sequence itself becomes a monstrous barrage of symbolism, as Carax variously invokes Tokyo's issues with immigration, terrorism, technology, translation, and the memory of war.

Bong's SHAKING TOKYO is a slow ode to the subculture of "hikikomori," Japanese agoraphobes who refuse to emerge from their homes. A shut-in lives a contented life in his immaculately ordered apartment, marked by the straight lines of his stacked books and the harmonious circles of paper-towel rolls and water bottles. When a series of earthquakes and an encounter with an alluring pizza girl force the recluse to venture outside, Bong begins to blur the sharp defining lines and edges within the frame, washing out the crisp focus with an ethereal surge of light.