壳与关节 (2019)
豆瓣
Shell and Joint
简介
Do people who try to kill themselves not want to live anymore? No, not at all, says the hotel employee in Shell and Joint, a woman who has made multiple attempts herself, including by jumping into a shark-infested sea. Deadly serious, she tells her colleague she blames it all on a bacteria that controls her mind.
Short-film maker Hirabayashi Isamu's feature film debut is full of these offbeat conversations. He portrays various characters at a Japanese capsule hotel in a series of absurdist sketches. One moment puppetry insects philosophise about death, the next a bunch of men discuss erections in the sauna. Hirabayashi uses tight, static framing, making everything extra surreal, and masterfully forges it into a fascinating whole that examines the distinction between man and insect and the thin line between existence and non-existence.