I've been off to the flicks again. And, as a 60 year old man, going to the movies with his late twenties daughter and mid-fifties ladyfriend, I was interested in the subject matter of Human Touch, a film not too shy to talk about aging and the relationship between older men and younger women, sex and sensibility, written and directed by Paul Cox.
The film was luscious to see, and certainly played off the audio track against the visuals in a very interesting manner.
If you were looking at the plot, then there may have been some things that were unnerving. I personally would rather things had remained implied rather than explained. Some misty elements of human relationships were tidied up by film's end, which I felt rather negated the truly ambivalent feelings of the major players. There was a man in his sixties, married and an artist/photographer, who wanted to see and touch a female under 40. She was not particularly beautiful, although very attractive, and I liked that about the film. Maybe it was just an accident of who was available, but it felt right - and made the film more credible. The young boyfriend of the young woman was a well-written character - driven by sex, and possessive as we are when young. A dying mother gave some depth to the older man's feelings, and a near-rape (or was it a full rape?) scene expressed the worst side of man's need for 'human touch'.
Interesting film, with a rather inconclusive ending - but that's life. It continues, with or without us.
At the Movie City News website, http://www.moviecitynews.com/reviews/human_touch.html, David Poland said: This is a film that might improve in memory. And I think he is right. We will think about this film after the cinema has closed and the ice cream containers have been swept up and put away.
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