By Peter Maddern
After assaulting an old man, Dawn (Leeanna Walsman) heads for the hills with her pre-teen daughter Steph (Onor Nottle). She is being pursued by a guy (Matt Day) and as the film develops we discover she is attempting to hide from him, holed up in a rural motel where by day she stays out of view but at night she consents to unhappy sex with the local copper (Greg Hatton.)
Along the way, titbits of information are provided to the audience, some confirming, some confounding rational hypotheses about what exactly is going on.
Touch is the latest film, albeit a five year project, from the SA Film Corporation and its Film Lab development arm. Prior to its release this week in cinemas, it has toured the world’s film festival circuit. It is a finely wrought mystery-thriller but it suffers from its low budget – the screenplay could only have run to about 30 pages and while the running time cannot be much more than 80 minutes there are times when one is screaming out for something to happen.
As such, Touch is a tribute to directorial style reigning over substance, maybe it’s even a monument to that cause, with any number of impossible light compositions and a never ending series of tactile moments that hark back to the film’s title.
But the details of the twist in the last 10 minutes lack credibility almost to the point of the absurd. (A reviewer’s vow not to disclose the important moments prevents me from providing more context here.)
All the actors do a great job, with Day particularly haunting and Nottle a visual delight. But writer / director Chris Houghton and his producers would have done well to keep knocking on investors’ doors before embarking on what finishes up as a flawed product.
Kryztoff Rating 3K
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