Directed by Baltasar Kormákur | Written by Kormákur and Olaf Olafsson, based on Olafsson’s novel | 121 min | ▲▲▲▲△
Has there ever been a greater distance in tone between Icelandic auteur Kormákur’s good-time 2013 action thriller 2 Guns — starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg — and Touch, a romantic intergenerational drama? Hard to believe it’s from the same filmmaker, though the source material he’s drawing from is entirely different. With Touch, the film is unmistakably an adaptation of a novel — in its pacing and the way it parcels out its plot developments it feels like you’re enmeshed in a great read. While it may not be particularly revolutionary in its structure or style, it’s wonderfully satisfying in what it accomplishes.
Kristofer (Egill Ólafsson) is an Icelandic senior citizen who in March 2020 is managing a few health challenges. Sensing his time may be short, he gets on a plane to London, the city of his youth (when he is played in flashbacks by Palmi Kormákur), just as Covid shuts down the city, including the hotel he’s staying at.
Kristofer is on a mission — to find the woman he fell in love with back in the late-’60s, Miko (Kôki), daughter of the owner and chef (played by the excellent Masahiro Motoki) at a Japanese restaurant where he worked.
The film deftly balances frequent time shifting to the young Kristofer’s life with his closer-to-present-day quest, doing justice to the drama in both periods. Younger Kristofer is a character not commonly seen in feature films — the thoughtful young man, not prone to rash decisions, not afraid of hard work, and genuinely curious. Beguiled by Miko, he starts to learn Japanese, wanting to understand the culture better through its food.
This is both a yearning film — wrestling with themes around aging, regret, the cost of war, the challenge of cross-cultural relationships — and a foodie movie — you’ll leave the cinema anticipating your next sashimi take-out — all framed by a gorgeous, autumnal glow in the cinematography.
Rooting Touch is the elder Kristofer — the journey into his past takes him to London, Tokyo, and Hiroshima — uncovering secrets he’s completely unprepared for, all delivered with remarkable poise by Egill Ólafsson.
He’s both vulnerable and sly, and when a bit of humour lightens the film it’s mostly thanks to his line deliveries and expressive face.
And if the film’s conclusion doesn’t fully deliver on the promise of the fantastic middle act — a little too much information is revealed in the last 10 minutes and we don’t have nearly enough time to absorb it — it’s a surprisingly moving, legitimately tear-jerking time at the pictures.
