Review | Touch movie review: intercultural romance gives hollow portrayal of atomic bomb survivors
- Japanese model Koki plays Icelandic man’s 1960s lover in drama that is warm, but shallow in its portrayal of Hiroshima bombing survivors
2/5 stars
Touch, a cross-cultural romance spanning 50 years and told in three different languages, follows an ageing widower as he embarks on a globetrotting search for the young Japanese woman he fell in love with decades earlier.
Set at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Touch opens as Kristofer (played by Icelandic musician Egill Olafsson) discovers his memory is fading and, heeding the advice of his doctor to resolve any unfinished business, sets off for London, despite the imminent threat of a worldwide lockdown.
Through a series of flashbacks, we meet the younger Kristofer (played by the director’s son Palmi Kormakur) in London at the end of the 1960s.
Disillusioned by the contemporary political landscape, he drops out of university and takes a job washing dishes at a Japanese restaurant, where he is taken under the wing of the proprietor, Takahashi (Masahiro Motoki).
