I’ve seen a lot of romance movies in my day, but Touch may be one of the most beautiful and inventive I’ve ever seen. It has two stories that take place in different periods of time. One in the 70s and the other relatively in the present day. Only a couple of years ago. Director Baltasar Kormakur with the help of the author of the novel Olaf Olafsson crafts a beautiful love story for the ages.

Kristoffer Hanesson (Egill Olafsson) is a restaurateur in Iceland at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He has some illnesses and decides on a whim to search for his lost love from fifty years prior.  The film also depicts the young Kristofer (Palmi Kormakur) as he stops going to college in London to embark on a new career in a Japanese restaurant called Nippon. While working there and learning the business he meets the beautiful daughter, Miko (Koki), of the owner Takahashi (Masahiro Motoki) who takes him under his wing. 

The film splits between these two times in the lead characters’ lives. The period setting in the 70s is during a tumultuous time in England. There are student protests and the music of the Beatles is hip. In fact Miko says she thinks Kristoffer looks like John Lennon, and he does. The Japanese family fled Hiroshima after WWII.  They are trying to make a life in London twenty years later, but the past keeps creeping up on them in the form of one word, hibakusha, which means a survivor of the bomb. 

In the present time, the main character travels to London where he has befriended the hotel concierge and eventually meets an old friend from when he worked at the restaurant. She gives him valuable information which he uses on his travels from that point on. Exploring Japanese he learns about their culture which he forgot. He has to try and relearn the language because it has been years since he spoke it. This will come in handy going forward in the film as he encounters various people who he interacts with on a personal level.

Kormakur is primarily known as an action director having made films like Beast, Everett,  Two Guns, and Contraband, but this is a little out of his wheelhouse. He has done a film with a romantic storyline it even though it was more of a survival tale, Adrift, but this is a beautiful piece of cinema that puts him in another category altogether. The two-sided story allowed him to flex muscles as a director he hadn’t done before. Romance isn’t easy to tackle, but does it like he’s been doing it for decades.  The subtleness of the love scenes and tenderness of these scenes and others were done impeccably well from the beginning to the end of the film. It was so beautifully done. I was genuinely moved by these emotional moments in the story.

I’ve seen some beautiful love stories in all the years I’ve been watching movies, but this one is special. Having a lost love and then going to try and find it for the end of your or her life is a special kind of film. The script which is adapted from the novel of the same name is as good of a screenplay as I’ve seen this year. The dialogue isn’t full of superfluous things. Every word used in the movie means something no matter who it comes from. Some of the dialogue is in Icelanish or Japanese so there are subtitles, but they’re easy to read and not that many in total. They don’t take away from the movie at all.

Touch is a poignant and beautiful love story. It has one touching moment after the other. The two separate stories within the film are like two different movies, but they both work on their own merits. The screenplay is well-written. The acting from both versions of Kristofer, Olafsson, and Kormakur, and Miko, Koki, are amazingly performed. Baltasar Kormakur has truly changed his action mentality as a director to one to look out for in the future. This is a genuinely moving picture in every way you would measure films. I was brought to tears at times during my viewing. I highly recommend everyone to see this beautiful film.

4 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen