Notes tucked between the leaves of a book; plastic cherry blossoms; a verse or two of an old poem … mere ephemera, to anyone other than the people to whom these relics mean everything. The people in question in this sweeping romantic drama are Kristófer (Palmi Kormákur) and Miko (Kōki), the participants in a clandestine love affair in 1960s London cut brutally short by the obligations of family.
Kristófer is a gentle, politically engaged Icelandic dropout from the London School of Economics, styled after Yoko-era John Lennon and working as a dishwasher in the Japanese restaurant owned by Miko’s father. Miko is a soft-spoken young woman whose quiet demeanor belies a disarmingly frank manner. The 1960s scenes are interlaced with scenes of Kristófer as an old man (played by Egill Ólafsson) attempting to track down Miko a lifetime later in pandemic-era London and Japan, with a view to reconnecting. These types of love stories are seductive; it’s never too late, they whisper – while at the same time showing, in the lost decades etched on Kristófer’s face, how very untrue those seductive whispers are.
Directed by Baltasar Kormákur, and adapted for the screen by Kormákur and Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson from Ólafsson’s novel, Touch is defiantly unfashionable in its straightforwardness; romance fans mostly have to go looking for love nested cozily in other genres. But there are no car chases or pratfalls here; this is a love story, pure and simple and unashamedly emotional. Kormákur also understands the visual appeal of romance: it’s not just about the pillow talk or heady declarations of passion, it’s about the images, and he doesn’t stint us in that regard. Even if it’s something as simple as Kristófer and Miko taking a bus together, Kormákur’s compositions scream painterly sentiment: manly arms in a creamy woollen sweater, her head tilted to gaze up into his eyes, their fingers interlocked, the sunlight as golden as it should be.
If we’re nitpicking it’s fair to say that neither of the couple’s interior lives are as fully fleshed out as would be permitted in a novel, but maybe they don’t have to be: they function as avatars for romantic hopes and dreams as much as anything, delivering all the vicarious pleasure and pain that we’re looking for when we tuck into a good romance.
• Touch is in UK and Irish cinemas from 30 August
