McDaniel
Distance.
Isolation.
Quarantine.
The COVID pandemic serves as a powerful contrast to the flashbacks of the love story “Touch.”
Based on Olaf Olafsson’s book of the same title, the film (now on Peacock) follows an elderly Icelandic man named Kristópher. Like so many during the pandemic, he is lonely, worried about his health, and it’s that lack of connection that drives him to seek a resolution to his life’s biggest mystery.
Fifty years prior, he fell in love with a Japanese college student named Miko in London, while working together at her father’s restaurant. One day, without warning, the restaurant closed suddenly and Miko and her father disappeared.
The story is told alternating between present time and flashbacks to 1960s London, where the young relationship blossoms between Kristópher and Miko, shot with great care to emphasize the power of human touch against the lack thereof in the age of COVID.
There are no big stars in the cast, and that makes the characters feel more like us — more real. We all experience heartbreak at some point, and all we can do is move forward. Kristópher moves on and lives his life: getting married, opening his own restaurant and raising his stepdaughter.
But if that chapter from five decades prior was closed, his heart needed an epilogue. Forgoing doctor appointments, and keeping his worried stepdaughter a phone call away, he sets out to find Miko and learn why their love story halted so long ago.
Mostly in English, sprinkled with subtitles when they speak Japanese and Icelandic, director Baltasar Kormákur (“Beast” and “Everest”) gives us a slow film, but like a good traditional Icelandic lamb soup (Kjötsúpa), the pace of its development leads to a tender, satisfying romance. It simmers then grows deeply tender — and it’s heartbreaking when it’s all gone.
Movies so often condemn their heroes if they ponder a love other than the one they got, but a film like “Touch” proclaims that it’s okay to appreciate both what is and what almost was.
Because while some stories don’t have a perfect ending, that doesn’t mean they’re not worth telling.
4/5
Scott McDaniel is an assistant professor of journalism at Franklin College. He lives in Bargersville with his wife and three kids.
