Touch Review
Touch (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by Baltasar Kormákur, written by Olaf Olafsson and Baltasar Kormákur and starring Egill Ólafsson, Kôki, Palmi Kormákur, Masahiro Motoki, Yôko Narahashi, Ruth Sheen, Meg Kubota, Tatsuya Tagawa, Charles Nishikawa, Siggi Ingvarsson, Eiji Mihara, Kieran Buckeridge, Brandy Row, Benedikt Erlingsson and Maria Ellingsen.
Filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur’s “touching” slice-of-life movie, Touch, focuses in on the story of an aging man from Iceland named Kristófer (Egill Ólafsson) who reflects back on his life when he is told to get his affairs in order by a doctor. He looks to the results of a medical test when we meet him, but he soon becomes engaged in a quest to find the lost love of his life, Miko (Yôko Narahashi). Time could be running out for Kristófer, but he is going to look for “the one who got away” in a slow and steady fashion until he finds her.
This film is about a pair of lovers who were indirectly torn apart by the devastating after-effects of war. It spans several decades and does a good job maintaining audience interest even when it simply just lets Kristófer exist with his ambitions as he goes through the process of trying to find his true love.
It’s not all about Kristófer as an older gentleman, though. We meet Kristófer (Palmi Kormákur) as a young man who is not finding his college studies to be his passion. He takes on a job as a dishwasher at a Japanese restaurant in London. The owner (the excellent Masahiro Motoki)’s young daughter, Miko (now played by Kôki) tells her dad not to hire Kristófer but the father doesn’t listen and thus a romance ultimately blossoms between Miko and Kristófer.
Back to the older Kristófer, we learn COVID-19 is taking over which is complicating his quest to find Miko. We can easily gather that current scenes in this picture are set at the beginning of the pandemic and the movie shows very accurate details as to how people reacted when they were first aware of the virus.
Kristófer’s wife is deceased, but one wonders why he wasn’t more interested in finding Miko at other points in his life. True, Kristófer had a family but the way the movie presents the young Kristófer and Miko’s torrid affair, it’s hard to believe searching for Miko hasn’t consumed Kristófer’s entire life whether he got married or not.
The scenes between the young Kristófer and Miko are superbly acted. Kôki and Palmi Kormákur create real on-screen passion together. Because they are so good, we wonder how their older selves managed to get through so much of their lives apart from one another. Yes, the movie answers questions regarding whether or not they looked for one another but the fact that Kristófer got married feels like something of a cop-out of an answer.
It’s hard to stay mad at some of the problems in Touch because the acting is so strong, and the performances ultimately redeem the movie. There’s not a false note to be found in the way the actors create their characters and develop them emotionally.
Miko and Kristófer are together in bed with a picture of Jesus watching them in one scene. Kristófer’s nosy landlord is watching him but she’s really just a nuisance and doesn’t seem to pose a real threat to the couple being together. What does pose a threat is that the effects of the atomic bomb factored into Miko and her family’s lives which helps complicate an already delicate situation.
There are some great scenes here. The ones between the young lovers are so powerfully rendered that their romance leaps off the screen. Then, the scenes in the latter part of the picture where the older versions of the lovers reunite arrive and secrets are revealed that prove to be quite fascinating to behold. There are some things that are left unspoken, and the director is to be credited for allowing the older Kristófer to not make anything about himself. It’s all about Miko as it should be. After all, he gave up on looking for her at some point in his life and needs to be there for her now that he’s found her again. He arrives with flowers which symbolize the passion he still carries for her deep within himself.
Kôki and Palmi Kormákur are nothing less than sublime in their roles here. Yôko Narahashi elegantly keeps her character’s composure during the late scenes as she accepts and deals with the big surprise that the older Kristófer has found her after all this time. Egill Ólafsson and Narahashi play off each other like a beautifully conducted opus and fill the screen with emotional substance and depth. The ending, in particular, is perfect.
Touch doesn’t miss the opportunity to pass some moments in the film by very realistically. Egill Ólafsson’s Kristófer befriends a man who does some karaoke at one point, and other things happen as well that don’t necessarily move the plot along too much but are nevertheless intriguing to watch.
Baltasar Kormákur has created a flawed film with a lot of captivating scenes. Many of the most powerful moments in the picture revolve around the secrets as to why Miko had to keep her distance from the love of her life. The love-making scenes all serve a very distinct purpose here and are expertly crafted as well. In the end, Touch is a journey through a man’s life where love played a key role – both in the life he had and the life he didn’t.
Rating: 7.5/10
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