I would say that being called a spiritual companion piece to Past lives is a compliment. Past Lives, for many, was the best film of last year, so they are not throwing that around lightly. This film about reconnecting after even more years apart has a very similar emotional resonance, but more importantly, it has audio description on peacock.
Instead about being two friends in South Korea who are separated when one moves to America, only to be reunited thanks to social media years later, Touch centers around a Scandinavian youth who abandons college to work in a Japanese restaurant, and becomes fully immersed in this world, and this culture. Eventually, he starts up a relationship with his boss’s daughter, and we get to explore this in a somewhat linear/non-linear form, as we watch him try to reconnect as a much older man. Through both stories, they work from beginning to end, with the young version discovering this life, and making a concerted effort to adapt to this new culture instead of forcing it to adapt to him, while the other is the elderly version who doesn’t have that much more time left, and would really like to see this former flame one last time.
Touch is touching. It hits you as it needs to, and it brings you right to your emotional core. The audio description helps with all the dialog that needs to be translated. This is the perfect example of a film that didn’t need movie stars, a famous A-list actor, or even English.
Final Grade: A-
