Comments on Piece Touchee and Close Quarters

by Julianne Arnstein

I found Piece Touchee funny and disturbing and sometimes dizzying. With the jerky movement, it is hard to keep watching all the time. But the effects of slowing down (in a sense) and focusing on this couple makes the viewer’s mind go crazy trying to figure out what their history is. I was constantly thinking murder, abuse, or sex. The wife seemed like she was either being murdered slowly, abused, or beginning sex. Of course none of these are true. Sometimes Arnold just becomes obsessed with a particular image he likes, like the woman’s rotating arm. I think Arnold is accentuating every single movement, telling the viewer that each movement is completely important. The viewer feels like all the work has been done for them: studying every movement is unnecessary because it is already the point of the film. But the viewer still tries to look into it further, as if Arnold has missed something. I felt like the work had been done for me but there was still more to look at. I studied facial expressions and eye direction to find a little extra; it becomes very disappointing because I have to keep reminding myself that none of this is real. Arnold forces us to form narrative and then turn around on ourselves and say, “Ha ha, there isn’t really a narrative, you knew that, and you still looked for one.”

I really liked Close Quarters because the camera shots were so detailed. I could see every hair on the cat and every line on the woman’s foot. This is another film obsessed with detail. Jim Jennings likes to focus on the little things that he thinks no one stops to notice. He appreciated graphic matches: the use of lines is extensive. The quick-paced flow of images erases the discomfort of switching between horizontal and vertical lines. Some lines look cartoonish and others appear on living beings. This mesh of images smoothes transitions between shots. And the images would all be beautiful in their own frame on the wall of a gallery.