Scandinavian Film Festival is on again! This gentle drama about an elderly man searching for The One Who Got Away, spanning decades, cultures and continents, was definitely a romance to remember.
Kristofer (Egill Ólafsson) is a widower and restaurant owner, living alone on the chilly, starkly beautiful coast of Iceland. Worried by the recent decline of his memory, he visits a doctor, who orders a brain scan. He also tactfully suggests to Kristofer that if there’s any unfinished business he may wish to take care of, he must do so now. This pessimistic prognosis prompts Kristofer to track down his first true love, who disappeared on him fifty years ago and left him with unanswered questions.
As we find out in the flashbacks, shot with warmer colours as opposed to the cooler palette of the present, young Kristofer (Palmi Kormákur) first met Miko (Japanese model Kōki) as a young leftie student in the late 1960s London. Disillusioned with his studies, he impulsively knocks on the door of a Japanese restaurant looking to hire a dishwasher, and is instantly smitten with a young Japanese woman who turns out to be the daughter of the owner. Miko is graceful and spirited, walking the line between being a dutiful daughter and embracing the freedom (and mini-skirts) of the times. The two eventually embark on a clandestine affair, until one day, without a warning, Kristofer finds the restaurant closed and Miko gone without a trace.
Now, decades later, Kristofer is flooded with the memories of the past. But just as he resolves to find out what happened to Miko, the world is hit with the COVID-19 pandemic, adding yet another layer of uncertainty. Though the pandemic remains merely a backdrop, it was eerie to get a reminder of its early days, when face masks, temperature checks, hotel closures and near-empty flights first made their appearances. Throughout the movie, Kristofer has to deal with calls from his increasingly worried stepdaughter struggling to understand his eccentric behaviour, but he has no time to wait.
Similar to last year’s Past Lives, Touch is a poignant, cross-cultural exploration of what might have been. Though ultimately low-key and unfussy, its non-linear storyline steadily builds up tension all the way to its cathartic third act ending, which made me tear up in the theatre for the first time in years. There are some dark and somber revelations about Miko’s family history back in Japan, but also unexpected touches of humour, such as when Kristofer decides to get a tattoo at the London parlour now occupying the space where the Japanese restaurant used to be.
If I had to nitpick, the actors playing young and old Kristofer don’t really look like the same person, but they’re both compelling leads in their own way. Old Kristofer is the heart and soul of the movie, with a well of emotion hidden behind his outwardly stoic demeanour, while young lanky twenty-something Kristofer is sincere, gentle and endearing. He falls in love not just with Miko, but also with Japanese language, food and culture, and builds a friendship with Takahashi-san, Miko’s father, who first warms to the tall Icelandic weirdo on his doorstep when Kristofer mentions his experience on the fishing boats back home. The film briefly touches on the racial divide and prejudices of the era, but like the pandemic they mostly hum in the background without becoming too much of a focus.
The movie would never have worked without a convincing, emotionally resonant romance between the two young lovers. Luckily Ólafsson and Kōki have a wonderful, palpable chemistry, and make for a strikingly beautiful couple. ‘Old-fashioned’ may sound like a strange compliment, but I mean it in the nicest way possible; there’s a sort of old-school quality to the romance and callbacks to an era when a simple touch between two people could feel erotically charged. The film knows when to be restrained, and when to let the emotion and sentiment run freely, all the way to its lovely, bittersweet ending.
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