Touchy Indeed
Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur bounces from wild lions to mushy romance in a covid re-romance.
Touch
Director: Baltasar Kormákur • Writers: Baltasar Kormákur, Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, based on the book by Ólafsson
Starring: Egill Ólafsson, Koki, Pálmi Kormákur, Masahiro Motoki, Yoko Narahashi
Iceland / USA / UK • 2hrs 1mins
Opens Hong Kong Aug 29 • IIB
Grade: B-
In Baltasar Kormákur’s muted, transcontinental, time-spanning romantic drama Touch (Snerting), an Icelandic widower, Kristófer (singer-actor Egill Ólafsson) who may be dying, packs his bags and heads to Japan to reconnect with The One That Got Away 50 years earlier, Miko (Yoko Narahashi), before it’s too late. Too late for what we’re not sure, but Touch is the kind of maudlin, melodramatic, lovey-dovey horseshit that you love or you hate. It’s not my jam (in case that wasn’t obvious) but plenty of people like an old fashioned romance and a good cry. No judgement. We like what we like, and Touch delivers on the romantic part even if it drops the ball on the rest of the filmmaking.
Which is a bit odd for Kormákur, who’s proven adept with juggling silly dynamics and plot points (see: the Idris Elba killer lion adventure Beast, Denzel Washington border thriller 2 Guns), scope (survival thriller Everest) and absurdist dramedy (his breakout 101 Reykjavík). Touch, however, is a jumble of wasted time, tired conventions, dropped threads and COVID realities – and that’s enough of that, thanks. Romantics are going to find emotional traction here. The rest of us will pull our hair out.
Not gazing in this moment...
In present-day Reykjavik, Kristófer is closing up the restaurant he owns. He’s gotten a tragic but as yet unidentified ailment and so has decided that with time tight, he’s going to find Miko and figure out why she vanished into thin air half a century before when they were getting hot and heavy in London. We then switch to stylish mod-era London where Kristófer (as a younger man played by Palmi Kormákur, progeny of Baltasar) is an agitating LSE student who drops out of university to work in a Japanese restaurant owned by Takahashi (Masahiro Motoki, Giri/Haji, Departures), who fled to London after the Second World War. He starts teaching himself Japanese, learns to cook from Takahashi and eventually meets his daughter Miko (Koki, scion of J-drama god Takuya Kimura). It’s the beginning of a grand romance. But – dun dun dun! – she has a deep dark secret, and of course tragedy, misunderstanding, cultural divide and Takahashi interfere in their affair and one day, poof. She’s gone. Now with COVID about to truly erupt, Kristófer retraces his steps to find her.
The entire point of Touch is to make us consider the passage of time, the value of memory – sometimes that’s enough – and that it’s never too late for a second chance. This is the bread and butter of the romantic drama, but much of it this one is saddled with narrative detritus we don’t need. It’s 1968 or 1969, so fill in the classic rock needle drops for yourself. Kormákur comes up to the line of racial tension but drops it. It turns out Miko and her dad are hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, which is dangled as a major plot point but comes to nothing except for giving us another cinema woman somehow defined by motherhood status. Yawn. We don’t get to explore the impact of what it means for Miko and Takahashi to be hibakusha but we get to see Kristófer get a million tattoos. Okay. Sure.
On the upside, Touch has kind of a happy ending, en route to which many moments are sure to pull some tears out of the sentimental among us. And admittedly it’s hard to deny the appeal of the young cast; they gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes with the best of them. If Koki is far more fully realised than young Kristófer, Baltasar the Younger makes up for some of his blandness in his scenes with Motoki, who’s charming, warm, protective and wounded in just the right amounts. It’s one of his best-ever performances. I’ll give Baltasar the Elder credit for not letting the material tip into full-on weepy territory, and Miko’s Mary Quant dresses were fabulous, but Touch is probably still best left to the genre pros. Also? I’ve had it with COVID. — DEK