A story of love, memory and mystery is set against a Nordic background in 'Touch'
Kaely Monahan“Touch” opens with a choir singing directly to camera in a lonesome Icelandic landscape. A red church is in the background. The rest is white with snow. The song is as chillingly beautiful as the backdrop.
Director Baltasar Kormákur captures the unique flavor of Nordic solitude and aloneness. And though it feels out of step with the movie, the song will be important later. It has a lonesome quality that suits widower Kristópher.
We meet him at the start of the pandemic when he is forced to close his restaurant. In his home are remnants of a life well-lived: Photos of his late wife, their daughter, mementos that were once cozy but now seem to embody loss.
But that loss doesn’t seem to bother Kristópher, at least not directly. Rather he is faced with a more pressing loss — that of his memory. With the news that he has dementia, Kristópher returns to a mystery that has haunted him since he was a student in London.
What book is the movie 'Touch' based on?
Based on Olaf Olafsson’s book by the same name, “Touch” examines the desire for resolution. The elder Kristópher, played by Egill Ólafsson, leaves Reykjavik to search for his first love who disappeared without a word half a century earlier.
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As a young man, Kristópher (the younger played by Palmi Kormákur) left the prestigious London School of Economics to become a dishwasher at a Japanese restaurant. Kristópher’s has a strong sense of socialistic, borderline communist views and is challenged by his friends to make good on his word to “leave school” to back it up. He takes the plunge and asks for a job at Nippon, a neighborhood restaurant.
His desire to stay at Nippon isn’t due to any political idealism, but love at first sight. Entranced by the restaurant owner’s daughter Miko (Kôki), Kristópher does what any tender-hearted and love-sick boy would do, he starts learning all he can about Japan and the Japanese language.
His Japanophilia is fueled by the warm embrace he receives from the restaurant workers. The owner Takahashi-san (Masahiro Motoki) helps Kristópher with his studies, teaches him how to cook and encourages Kristópher to try writing haiku.
As for Miko, she chafes under her father’s strict rules. It is the late 1960s and Miko is a woman of the time. She wants to go out, have a boyfriend and live her life freely. But her father’s strictness is based on an underlying fear that we only discover later.
That fear is causes Takahashi-san to abruptly close up his restaurant and disappear from London almost without a trace, taking his daughter with him.
What is the movie 'Touch' about?
Back in the present, the older Kristópher, facing the realities of dementia, traces the threads of Miko’s return to Japan. Then he flies to Japan to search for her.
“Touch” is deeply layered with meaning. Set both during the pandemic, when touching was socially forbidden, and in the late ‘60s when social norms about relationships were pushed against, there’s a delicate and lovely interplay with the meaning of the word.
Author Olaf Olafsson helped write the screenplay and you can feel his intentions throughout. There is a literary beauty woven throughout the film. He asks you to examine what it means to reach out and touch someone — or have someone touch you.
Both the physical and the metaphysical are orchestrated wonderfully.
Director Baltasar Kormákur takes a light 'Touch' with Olaf Olafsson's story
Director Baltasar Kormákur, who has many action films under his belt, uses a lighter touch to handle this delicate story of love, loss and searching. There’s a subtle difference in color and tone in the different eras, with Kristópher’s youth bathed in a warmer light. The older Kristópher is surrounded by cool grays and blues and a sterile feel that isn’t only due to the pandemic.
It’s rare that a movie based on a book makes me want to actually read the book, but between Kormákur and Olafsson’s creativity, I’m tempted to make “Touch” my summer reading.
'Touch' 4 stars
Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★
Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★
Director: Baltasar Kormákur.
Cast: Egill Ólafsson, Kôki, Palmi Kormákur.
Rating: R for some sexuality.
How to watch: In theaters Friday, July 12.
Contact Kaely Monahan at kaely.monahan@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on our podcasts Valley 101 and The Gaggle, and X, formerly known as Twitter, @KaelyMonahan.