Touch

Kristófer is an elderly widower in Iceland who has just learned his memory is failing. As the pandemic begins he closes his house and goes to London. He is looking for Miko, the woman he met there in 1969, who worked in her father's Japanese restaurant. Fifty years ago Miko and her father disappeared in a day and he never learned why. The subject is not love but the time left in which to get an answer. He does not set out in romantic hope; he wants to finish something before his memory goes, and the film says so plainly. The form moves between two times. The London of 1969 is warm and crowded; the present is empty, closed and quiet. The pandemic is not background but an obstacle that keeps making the journey harder. The source is Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson's novel of 2022; the author co-wrote the screenplay with the director. The final section takes place in Japan and the reason for the disappearance turns out to concern the family's past. Egill Ólafsson plays the older Kristófer, the director's son Pálmi Kormákur the younger, and Kōki plays Miko. Baltasar Kormákur directs. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet love stories told across two times. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace; the film is slow and saves most of its emotional effect for the last section.