TOUCH (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

Touch, Focus Features

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 11, 2024

If one is lucky, one event, person, or single memory will persist through the course of one's life. If we're luckier still, it'll be a memory of enduring love like the story of Touch.

This is one of those old-fashioned romances about a couple who knew each other for less than a year or maybe just a few months, but the connection here spans decades without any contact and thousands of miles between the two. Surely, we've seen this kind of story before co-writer/director Baltasar Kormákur's film. Indeed, it's likely another like it will appear before us with a slightly distinct premise and different characters soon enough, but Kormákur approaches it with such sincerity and simplicity of intent that it's lovely in, well, sincere and simple ways.

Part of the tale is set during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as countries begin instituting shelter-in-place orders and barring travel. Just before that begins, Kristófer (Egill Ólafsson) is awaiting the results of a brain scan from his doctor. He has been having difficulty remembering things, and he awakens feeling stiff and spends the rest of the day in some amount of pain. The prognosis isn't official, but Kristófer, who lives in Reykjavik, has no delusions of what the imminent diagnosis will be. It's not a promising sign that his doctor mentions how people in his situation often start looking toward unfinished business.

The only unfinished business of note for our Icelandic protagonist happened about 50 years ago—51 precisely, he makes a point of letting someone know he can specifically remember that much. It was while he was living and attending an economics college in London, with dreams of revamping the concept of socialism and protesting over the school administration's decision to suspend students for meeting in an unauthorized location. We already know none of that worked out for Kristófer, who lives alone in a fine house, sings in a local choir, and owns a restaurant that suddenly closes until further notice. He has a trip to make.

The basic structure of Kormákur and Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson's screenplay (the latter adapting his own novel) is of the back-and-forth variety. We see the elder Kristófer on his trek, flying from Iceland to England just as news of the pandemic is starting to look bleak. He has no real ties to anyone in his life, as a widower for some time and the stepfather to a woman who worries about him generally and specifically when he mentions his plans. There's only two or three flashes to Kristófer in middle age or so, when his marriage is clearly unhappy and unfulfilling for either partner, and that hint of mundane tragedy is just enough for us not to ask too many questions about the relationships with the wife and the stepdaughter.

Instead, the story's real focus is on that college-aged Kristófer, played by Pálmi Kormákur. The low-stakes rebel and aspiring anarchist wears circle-frame glasses, has shaggy shoulder-length hair, and grew enough scruff to constitute a beard, and at one point, a young woman notes that he looks like "Lennon." The little pause here is a nice touch, if only because he's obviously copying the look of John Lennon circa 1969, when he and Yoko Ono made front pages by lying in bed in protest, but maybe thinks the woman is referencing a different man with a similar sounding last name—one to whom a young socialist would probably rather be compared.

The woman is Miko (Kôki), the daughter of the owner of a Japanese restaurant in London. Kristófer applies for a job there on a kind of dare with his peers, who joke that his political aims would be better served by becoming a member of the proletariat, but as soon as he sees Miko on his way out of the restaurant, it's as if everything—school, politics, whatever he might have wanted to do with his life—vanishes, except for her. He takes the job and starts doing everything he can to earn the approval of Takahashi (Masahiro Motoki), the restaurant's owner, and catch the attention of Miko.

He does, of course, although it takes some time and plenty of effort, such as learning some of the Japanese language and a decent amount of the cooking. There's a more practical reason for it, as we learn much later, but a fascinating dynamic develops with our understanding of these characters.

All of the story—the present-tense search for Miko and the budding romance between the younger versions of the couple—is from Kristófer's perspective, who hears certain words being spoken and observes little moments among and between Miko and her father. Kristófer, though, has little understanding of what any of those things actually mean—why it matters that Takahashi was originally from Hiroshima, why a Japanese term referring to atomic bomb survivors is frowned upon by fellow restaurant employee Hitomi (Meg Kubota), why Takahashi sees the boyfriend Miko is first with in such a disapproving light, why that guy simply leaves the picture without any warning.

The mystery here isn't quite as simple as it first appears. Instead of wondering where Miko is and what she's doing and if she might remember Kristófer in 2020, the bigger questions become about Miko, her superficially happy but much trickier relationship with her father, and the reason Kristófer has gone more than half a century without any word from or way to find her.

There are answers, of course, which are about as bittersweet as one might anticipate from a story with this particular setup. Touch earns them, though, because the film, shot in these assorted international locations with a real richness by cinematographer Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson, looks the part of a classic romance and, in how the simplicity of Kristófer's trek grows to reveal the complexity of Miko's life, feels like one, too.

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