Arm
Breakups are hard, sometimes the only consolation the closeness of friends who know the situation, who understand the background and the reasons, who can offer a shoulder to lean on. Lockdown was also hard, the forced isolation from anyone but the smallest bubble of immediate family, if any were within easy travelling distance.
For Katharine, a breakup during lockdown was the worst possible scenario, leaving the noise of the world outside behind as she escapes up to her new flat, existing instead in the painful silence of a jumble of boxes, random books with stories of longing, loss and disappointment, in a moment of realisation deciding that she needs to be held and buying an arm to fill that hole in her life.
A bizarre short film of nightmares come true from writer and director Jill Worsley starring Katharine Markwick, her prosthetic appendage pal not listed in the credits, each of them performing numerous other roles in the production due to the restrictions in place during the shoot, Arm is an appropriate metaphor for being severed from the body which makes a whole, Katharine suffering alone and attempting to find or at least distract herself in home yoga disasters and private cheese and wine parties before moving the false comfort of a prosthetic relationship substitute.
The isolation emphasised by the lack of dialogue – all the voices are others, taunting self-care podcasts, ominous radio news broadcasts – Katharine tortures herself by looking out of her window at happy couples below, her perceived inadequacy finally manifesting in the arm by which she is wrapped, tangled and eventually strangled, rediscovering herself in the fight, a nocturnal workout achieving what therapy could not.
Arm will be available on the Arrow platform from Friday 12th April
