Touch

Baltasar Kormákur spent the best part of two decades making survival stories in Hollywood, from 'Everest' to 'Beast'. 'Touch' is something else entirely: a love story, adapted from Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson's novel with the author sharing the script, and Iceland's Oscar entry for 2025. There isn't a car chase in sight, and barely a word of Icelandic after the first few minutes.

Early 2020. Kristófer, a widower who runs a restaurant in Reykjavik, has just been told he's losing his memory. Before it's too late he shuts up shop and, just as the world goes into lockdown, flies to London. He wants to find out what happened to Miko, his first love, who walked out of his life fifty years ago without a word.

Then we're back in 1969. Young Kristófer is a leftist student at the London School of Economics who drops out and takes a job washing dishes at Nippon, a Japanese restaurant. The demanding owner, Takahashi, ends up teaching him to cook, and something starts between Kristófer and the boss's daughter, Miko. They have to keep it a secret, and she has reasons he doesn't yet understand.

The older Kristófer is played by Egill Ólafsson, a veteran Icelandic actor and singer who lives with Parkinson's. The younger one is Pálmi Kormákur, the director's son, an art student with no acting training who came to the audition at the casting team's suggestion. Model Kōki plays Miko, and Masahiro Motoki, the star of 'Departures', is her father. Ruth Sheen and Benedikt Erlingsson turn up too.

It was a box office hit at home, was nominated for the Nordic Council Film Prize and made the Oscar shortlist of fifteen, as Kormákur's 'The Deep' had, though it missed out on a nomination. Focus Features released it in America in July 2024 and Universal brought it to British cinemas that August. Reviews were warm, with most critics struck by how restrained it is.

• Romance
• Drama