Why anyone would release an awards-worthy drama like writer/director Baltasar Kormákur’s Touch in the heart of the summer is a mystery to me, but don’t let this deeply moving film slip between the cracks of the blockbusters surrounding it. Kormákur is an Icelandic-born filmmaker making mostly English-language, action-based movies (The Beast, 2 Guns, Contraband) for the past decade or more. But Touch feels more personal, even though it’s based on a novel by co-writer Olaf Olafsson. In it, an elderly Icelandic gentleman named Kristofer (Egill Ólafsson) sets out in search of an old acquaintance back in London, where he went to university and ended up working in a Japanese restaurant. His ill-timed search takes place just as the world begins shutting down thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but his journey also triggers memories of his time as a much younger man some 50 years earlier (young Kristofer is played by Pálmi Kormákur), and a great deal of the film is flashbacks to the early 1970s.
At the restaurant, Kristofer meets two people who would forever change his life: the owner and head chef, Takahashi-san (Masahiro Motoki), and his daughter Miko (Kôki, with older Miko played by Yoko Narahashi), who has a boyfriend, but it’s obvious that she and Kristofer have a connection. It turns out that Takahashi and his late wife were survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima (Miko was in utero at the time, and it was assumed until she was born that she would be born dead or with major birth defects). But as one would expect, the entire traumatic event changed Takahashi forever, in ways he would never reveal to someone outside of his immediate family.
All of this ties together beautifully with Kristofer’s modern-day search, which is triggered when he goes in for medical tests to see if he’s losing his memory and his doctor makes mention of possibly taking the time waiting for results to settle his affairs. Losing touch with Miko was his life’s biggest regret, so he departs without giving his grown daughter any warning, leaving her confused and slightly panicked as the pandemic gains steam globally. Not wanting to give too much away, I’ll relay that Kristofer finds that his beloved restaurant has become a tattoo parlor and that Miko and her family moved back to Japan, where he heads next on his quest.
Touch has themes of faded memories and ones that remain crystal clear, and both older and younger Kristofer are endearing characters whose various life crises are easy to feel invested in and whose emotional journeys you eagerly join in on to see where they lead. The melancholy yet hopeful tone reminds me of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car and Wim Wenders’ recent Perfect Days, and I became equally curious about the paths on which the respective filmmakers would take these quiet, driven characters.
There are moments in Touch that will likely result in tears, most of them of the happy variety, but also the kind that come from realizing that 50 years was wasted because of foolish mistakes and the demands of others. Both characters lead full, mostly happy lives in the interim, but what could have been clearly haunts them the entire time. Almost by accident, the movie is one of the better films ever made about the early days of the pandemic. There are times where we’re more concerned about Kristofer’s mask falling under his nose than we are about where he is in his search. His story feels like it’s a race against the clock, even though no real countdown is mentioned. In so many ways, Touch is a perfect type of love story, and my heart was completely taken over by this sweet, simple search story.
The film expertly keeps us guessing about a few key elements, but this isn’t a story about splashy reveals and shocking twists. Instead, this is a story of how we all handle great pains differently, which may not sound like a must-see event, but Touch is also funny, charming, beautiful, and easily one of the best films you’ll see this year.
The film is now playing the in theaters.
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