Twinkle

Twinkle (1992) is a very simple film shot in one continuous take from a single fixed viewpoint. It features a woman trying on a series of different shoes and outfits in her bedroom while she listens to a record of high-pitched American hits from the 1950s. Twinkle instantly conjures the sense of excitation that getting ready for a night out arouses, but this soon passes when we begin to realise that the woman isn’t going anywhere. As the film continues, we see her ever more caught up in an inevitable cycle of indecision bound by the number of shoes she owns. As the tempo of the music and the trying on of outfits begin to slide apart, the scene undoes itself and begins to resemble a strangely solipsistic ceremony, where the outfits are performed as dazzling burdens for the body rather than mere party clothes.