‘Touch’ is a Gentle Japanese-Icelandic Romance

In these nostalgic scenes, sunlight pours through the windows of the small Japanese restaurant where he once worked as a cook. Played by Palmi Kormakur, the younger Kristófer is lankier and less sure of himself—though no less poised—and initially chooses this profession as a means to add practice to his Marxist theory. However, when he meets Miko, the owner's daughter, a whirlwind secret romance is added to the mix, as he attempts to learn Japanese while navigating the thorny specifics of her cultural background as a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. 

This detail is the movie's unexpected strength, given the lengths to which it goes in order to portray the complexities of such tremendous trauma. While Miko was too young to remember the devastation, its ripple effects continue to permeate her daily life, courtesy of cultural apprehensions around survivors owing to misinformation about radiation. It's a facet of World War II not often portrayed in western cinema, but Kormákur and Ólafsson fold it deftly into their star-crossed romance, as a complication outside either Miko's or Kristófer's control. 

Egill Ólafsson stars as Kristofer in 'Touch.'

Credit: Baltasar Breki Samper / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES

When Kristófer's travels eventually take him to modern Hiroshima, this reflection on historical atrocity ought to feel ever-present, though it's unfortunately sidelined in favor of his romantic quest. However, the film eventually finds ways to re-orient this meditation eventually, even if it takes someone else reminding him of where he finds himself in the movie's final act.

This is one of several such tensions pulling at Touch from either end. On one hand, it wants desperately to be a wistful romance told through recollections. On the other hand, it invokes painful history along the way, but the movie's two warring modes are eventually blended well enough to be effective, even though it takes a while to get there. Miko, though she's sheltered by patriarchal constraints, is boisterous and outgoing enough to shake them off on occasion, but Kristófer knows his place in this cultural rebellion: as an onlooker, and a support system from afar. His role is to understand, rather than to push and prod. 

Pálmi Kormákur stars as Young Kristofer and Kōki as Young Miko 'Touch.'

Credit: Lilja Jonsdottir / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES

Kormákur's filmmaking is similarly thoughtful, if occasionally incomplete. As the older Kristófer heads back to London, he's framed—both on his plane ride and on a local bus journey—next to two empty seats. And while this may be a logistical result of the early pandemic, it can't help but embody the two key absences in his life: Miko, with whom he lost touch decades ago, and his recently departed wife, a white woman he married years later. Although the movie's focus is his attempt to re-connect, it also doesn't go far enough to reconcile (or even really wrestle with) his love for his eventual partner, and the grief he feels in the wake of her death, as though these two forms of love and loss can co-exist. Instead, his wife, and her death, merely feel like motivation for him to enact the plot, rather than vivid emotional complications along his journey.

The film is, for better or worse, much more accomplished in its flashbacks scenes, which speak to a more complete sense of character psychology, even though they find Kristófer in a less certain place and time in his life. While the movie seldom ventures outside the restaurant's confines—and in failing to do so, doesn't quite mirror the differences and commonalities between its leads' respective foreign-ness—it manages to create an intimate environment in which they (and the film's Japanese supporting characters) thrive.

 The younger Kristófer's desire to learn Japanese initially stems from mere convenience. However, it eventually grows into a search for a deeper connection with Miko, and a yearning for cultural belonging in a strange land—which brings him full circle decades later, as though some part of himself had been hidden away, waiting for re-discovery.