Shell and Joint

Finnish-Japanese outright feast about two childhood friends who work at the reception of a Japanese capsule hotel with guests who are strange to say the least.

Nitobe likes philosophy and shellfish. Sakamoto is fixated on suicide and has previously tried to take her own life due to bacteria that control her behavior. The guests at the hotel where they work live in capsules. Among them are a woman on the run, a researcher, and a young Finnish woman who has lost her child and who leaves the hotel to go to the sauna. In the sauna the men discuss erections and try to hide their condition under towels. Isamu Hirabayashi explores the subject of life and death through fragmentary images of the characters’ lives. Shell and Joint is pure revelry with a deep philosophical foundation.

• Freddy Olsson