Pièce touchée

Hilarious, sinister, and an inspired treatise on both marital relations and the concept of filmic time and space. Hypnotic, fun, and striking. Since Arnold merely uses existing footage, it's tempting to dismiss this as something anyone could make, but that is clearly not the case. Just like being a drummer, being an experimental film-maker is all about rhythm, and Arnold has that in spades. As the footage speeds up and the original intentions of the piece are all but lost, the director simply uses it geometrically, but before that, there is something deeply hilarious and unsettling about the husband having to go through such a struggle to get to kiss his wife, and her response, again, is magnified by the treatment. Unlike Arnold's follow-ups, I don't know where the found footage stems from, but I would like to. It doesn't matter that much, mind, it works completely on its own.

After a little while, I got legitimately somewhat borderline-nauseous watching this disorienting and strange experimental short. It is directed by the obscure avant garde filmmaker Martin Arnold, whose style is certainly...interesting. I definitely like it quite a bit, but it is also fair to say that his films can get tedious despite their short lengths, this one especially. However, this tediousness does work w/the film's smirking tone, and helps both elevate the humour and atmosphere of the short. Of course, that doesn't mean that it is free from being frustrating in some regard. This is certainly not for all, not even if you like experimental film, it's slow and strange, but it is saved by how uniquely funny it is while also maintaining this bizarre and nightmarish brand of surrealism that I can really get into.