‘Touch’: Baltasar Kormákur’s Quiet Love Story Is an Empathetic and Viscerally Moving Journey

Tony Sokol

Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur delivers a flawless tale of romance derailed in his emotionally riveting drama, “Touch.” Spanning five decades, this film is beautifully subversive, not only in contrast to Kormákur’s action genre flicks like “Beast,” “Contraband,” and “2 Guns,” and his deep Icelandic studies like “The Sea,” but also in how the quietest moments of “Touch” present a devastating flipside to the 2023 blockbuster “Oppenheimer.” “Touch” has tragic elements, both in classic and emotional senses, but the sadness consistently and subtly comes from unexpected sources.

Scripted by Kormákur, along with Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, who wrote the 2022 novel “Touch,” this film tells a simple story. Kristófer, played by veteran Icelandic actor and singer Egill Ólafsson, is an elderly widower experiencing early stages of dementia. He struggles to remember things, has a hard time trusting his own memory, and is losing his fine motor skills, making it difficult to do simple tasks, like tying shoes, fastening buttons, and sending text messages. Kristófer’s doctor tells him, “In situations like yours, people often use the opportunity to take care of unfinished business.”

Prior to this humanitarian prognostic, Kristófer had already made vague allusions to things left undone in his life. When he mentions part of his mental exercises include memorizing haiku, it is a sensory foreshadowing which transcends the underlying romance to also include an intimate working relationship with a man who once employed him. His old boss, restaurant owner Takahashi-san (Masahiro Motoki), who is apparently still mentoring, is the father of the waitress, Miko (Kōki), whom he fell for in London, where she was also studying psychology, and learning about love and freedom. 

The contemporary part of “Touch” is set in the beginning of 2020, as Covid-19 is quickly making the world a smaller place. Kristófer is advised that the hotel he is staying at will be shutting down, and the concierge urges him to board a plane to Iceland before it is too late. Kristófer is chasing something further overdue, and far more important. He closes his Reykjavik restaurant, and moves to London without telling his daughter, a far-off voice, forever leaving messages on his phone. The Japanese restaurant Kristófer worked at as a young man has since turned into a tattoo parlor. After getting inked with the Japanese symbol for bravery, Kristófer traverses his old haunts in search of the whereabouts of his former love, Miko, ultimately boarding a plane to Tokyo, and missing his daughter’s birthday. 

The majority of the flashbacks to 1969 are a joy, and enthusiastically performed with all the promise of perceived endless youth. Young Kristófer is played by Pálmi Kormákur, the director’s son, and the familial connection appears to enjoy short-hand tips on interacting with the audience through the lens of the camera. After being badgered by his friends, Kristófer drops out of the London School of Economics to take a dishwashing job at a Japanese restaurant called Nippon. Kristófer claims it is because he is a Communist, and wants to live life as a worker, but his decision is made after brushing past Miko, the daughter of Takahashi-san.

All of the relationships within the restaurant are nuanced and friendly. The tight Japanese family unit comes to appreciate Kristófer, especially after he says he worked on a fishing boat, and has scars to prove it. Takahashi-san and Kristófer specifically bond over monkfish, ugly creatures which taste delicious. Soon, Kristófer is learning the Japanese language, and the restaurant’s traditional breakfast dishes, for fun and education, not as ambition.

Kormákur masterfully uses passing conversation to establish the time setting, as well as imbue Kristófer with the qualities of then-Beatle, John Lennon. As an older man, Kristófer looks through a box of memories, and the first piece he picks out is a vintage newspaper article about John and Yoko’s Bed-In for Peace. Shortly later, while “Give Peace a Chance” is playing, Miko tells Kristófer that he reminds her of Lennon, and it is not because of the long hair, beard, and glasses. Later, after reading a haiku written by Kristófer, Takahashi-san gives him a gift, and in the accompanying card calls him a “gentle soul,” the same endearment Frank Sinatra made of Lennon after hearing the news of his death. Another era-setting inclusion in the soundtrack, The Zombies’ “Time of the Season,” establishes more than the period in which “Touch” is set. It also underscores a cultural divide.

The emotional high point of this film has no words. After Kristófer sings an Icelandic song to celebrate the birthday of a Japanese doctor who is a regular guest at the restaurant, Miko brushes her hand across the bandana holding back Kristófer’s hair. The exchange only lasts three or four seconds on screen, but reverberates for quite a while. It was only a short while ago when Kristófer was told he was too tall to easily don the hair covering. The depth of emotions between the two is instantly conjured in the scene, which has the loving touch that gives this film its title, and is infinitely moving.

The performances are routinely multilayered. Whether committing to the low-key exuberance of the joys of pickles or Essex clams, late night karaoke, and stolen kisses, or to the darkness of the generational effects of the bombing of Hiroshima, there is not a single missed or misplayed note. Even the small, transitional characters, like a newfound drinking buddy randomly befriended in a Tokyo bar, are fully formed. They don’t need many words to give full histories, and all characters often communicate beyond dialogue through lingering looks of remorse or desire.

Pálmi Kormákur’s Kristófer is as understated as he is beneficent, polite enough to learn the language, inquisitive in all things, from tattoos to a translation of the Japanese word “hibakusha.” Upon hearing the meaning, atomic bomb survivor, a young Kristófer immerses himself in research, and Japanese films to understand their side. The Egill Ólafsson’s elder Kristófer sublimely integrates all the empathetic knowledge of his younger self, and fills every interaction with a sense of a true appreciation of the information coming from the other side of his experience, yet tempered with its anticipation.

Kōki presents a versatile performance. Young Miko is joyous, rebellious, playful, haunted, and forever torn, yet infinitely stylish. Miko knows what she wants, and is desperate to keep it a secret shared by two. The elder Miko, played by casting director Yoko Narahashi, completes the emotional arc by expanding the parameters of the stakes. Narahashi brings a broken sensitivity, but also the greatest hope to be found within film. The last exchange between the elder Miko and Kristófer saves “Touch” from a tear-jerking conclusion. It is followed by the same song which inspired their first touch, sung by Kristófer, and yet it still sidesteps the corniness and clichés of Hollywood films attempting the same kind of gesture.

Cinematographer Bernsteinn Björgúlfsson captures the warmth of the interiors, and the character of the surrounding landscapes, whether in Reykjavik, London, Tokyo, or Hiroshima. This makes “Touch” as universal in the space it takes up geographically as the space it captures emotionally, with both lingering long after the final credits roll.

“Touch” releases July 12 in select theaters.