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Touch Movie Review

Touch is a 2024 romantic drama film directed by Baltasar Kormakur and starring Egill Olafsson. This is a solid, though not great film.

A man embarks on an emotional journey to find his first love, who disappeared 50 years ago, before his time runs out. First off, I was surprised that this movie got a pass for the Academy Awards when their rules state that it should not be largely in the English language, which this movie is. The point of the film is that this is a very international romance, but how the director went about depicting it was wildly uneven.

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The premise was terrific, but I would have personally preferred a story about not just this romance, but an overall life and choices that the protagonist has made. The romance itself worked to a degree. It goes through the motions and none of the two characters were all that well developed, but the performers did a great job and they somewhat elevated their roles.

Touch is all about the passage of time and how nostalgia runs through every pore of our being in old age. There is a sense of pensive longing, melancholy and loneliness that was present throughout and that tone was very well established. But the issue here was that the romance was never as moving as intended, though the ending was quite strong.

This movie definitely is reminiscent of ‘Past Lives’, but it simply lacked the elegance and artistry of that small masterpiece. Kormakur’s directing is solid, but he failed to imbue the movie with strong cinematic qualities. It looks good, but the flashbacks were still too bright, and the pacing was overly slow. It’s an overlong movie for its simple story.

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