Touch

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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Baltasar Kormákur directs “Touch,” an affecting multi-cultural star-crossed love tale that has wonderfully nuanced performances despite being somewhat predictable in its sentimentality. To its credit, the film has a fair amount of understatement, and this adds to its honesty and gives the story a tangible sense of haunt which all great love stories possess.

It is 2020 on the eve of Covid lockdown and the aging widower Kristófer (Egill Ólafsson) is consumed with imagery of his girlfriend Miko (Kōki) who left him without warning 51 years ago. Kristófer is bound and determined to locate Miko. Faced with a diagnosis of dementia, Kristófer knows that the time is now.

We see Kristófer (Palmi Kormakur) as a handsome young economics student in the 1960s with Lennon glasses. He inquires about a job in a sushi bar as a dare with his conservative friends. He lands an interview with the owner but not before meeting the subtly spontaneous and open Miko. Kristófer is instantly smitten.

Needless to say, the young man becomes part of the sushi restaurant in no time. One day in the kitchen, Miko touches Kristófer seductively in an occult fashion along his cheek and a romance begins with both of them visiting each other’s homes. The young man’s mother is suspicious as Miko is Asian.

A saddened Miko reveals to her love that at the time of her birth she was premature and made to feel less than others. In the eyes of her father and society, she is considered a victim of Hiroshima. Miko’s mother died shortly after childbirth from radiation poisoning.

All that the much older Kristófer can think about is Miko. He cares little for his own well-being during Covid. He must get to her, to find out what happened.

All of the roles are excellent here and the younger actors match coherently with their senior doppelgängers.

The sensual scenes alone have a palpable sense of danger and suspense.

There is a real quality in this film that depicts the loneliness embodied in the passage of time and adventures unrealized. The sight of the 70-year-old Miko (Yoko Narahashi) hugging her long ago lover will no doubt get your tear ducts going, but more than that, this film portrays the ghost-lives of youth that exist inside those of us who are older.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com