Nobody is out here portraying the despair and loneliness of existing in capitalist spaces like Kaurismäki. We hear raucous laughter and joy through a door that Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) holds open but chooses not to go through. At this point in the film, he is too mired in the life-sapping energies of supermarkets, docks, and sad karaoke bars for that. Similarly Kaurismäki’s subversion of the romantic comedy gives his protagonists several opportunities to meet cutely and instead they deny themselves repeatedly.