Closeup Gallery completes the trilogy of short films that began with In the Palace (2000) and Birds (2001). The small communities of those earlier films are replaced here by an intimate communion of two; the earlier elaborate mise en scene are distilled into the microcosm of a card-covered table; the conceit of ‘hand made magic’ that travels through the trilogy is here literalized through the card players’ world of fakery, where simple materials transform.
