Avis des critiques

[The film's] sensibility is as exquisitely tender as the flutter of a butterfly wing... [Touch's] embrace of compassion and forgiveness for everyone is heartwarmingly spacious. It shimmers with grace.

Kormákur’s film doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does have its little idiosyncrasies in a genre that can be very formulaic. Flashback films tend to lean on needle-drops to evoke period, but Touch uses them sparingly, notably with devastating use of Nick Drake.

[Touch] is an epic, old-fashioned weepie in the vein of “Atonement” and “The Notebook” — it’s mushy and ridiculous, then, suddenly, you’re in the throes of an ugly cry... [It's a film that] rekindles a treacly genre that I didn’t realize I missed.

[Touch's premise] may sound, on paper, like the basis for a mawkish tearjerker — and there are moments of high emotion — but director Baltasar Kormákur and his actors err on the side of restraint, delivering a balanced, absorbing human drama.

“Touch” is intermittently affecting and reaches unexpected heights in a powerful third act containing several surprises that enrich the story as well as Kristófer’s life. Yet it takes far too long to get there. The script, co-written by Mr. Kormákur and Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, based on the latter’s novel, has a certain inertia in its middle scenes.

I can’t quite put my finger on what’s missing in “Touch,” and why a well-carpentered, attractively realized film ends up feeling a little superficial. Maybe it’s the material’s hands-off approach to the elder version of Kristófer... [or] maybe it’s the way the culminating scenes (no spoilers here) hit their emotional marks, dutifully, in ways that feel more dramatically tidy than authentically lifelike.

Much of the film’s beauty lies in the wholesomeness of Kristofer as a character... The cruelty of nature might have turned him into the ultimate unreliable narrator, but Ólafsson embodies the character with so much empathy and curiosity that it’s easy to get wrapped up in the narrative tapestry he weaves from the fragments of his own memories. The result is a film whose elegance is all the more staggering because it came from the man who directed “2 Guns” and “Beast.”

The film is somewhat hampered by the fact that the 1960s scenes are far more interesting than the modern scenes. We’d much rather hang out with young Kristófer than the old one... Nevertheless, as “Touch” nears its conclusion, we do care what happens. We want that search for Miko to be successful. Ultimately, the film does its job with skill and heart.

Pálmi Kormákur and Kōki are exceptionally sweet performers, falling into natural rhythms and convincingly portraying moments of romantic intimacy... but the film can’t quite help itself and eventually resorts to formulaic melodrama right at the end. It doesn’t ruin “Touch,” but it’s still a touch too much.

A panoramic love story interrupted by time, mystery and the fallout of war, the elegantly crafted film knows when to curb its sentimentality and when to let it resonate. [Touch] deftly balances two strands separated by half a century, acted with great sensitivity by the four leads.

[Touch] elegantly crafts an achingly poignant story centered on an elderly man searching for his true love amidst a time of uncertainty. This gentle, unfussy romance contains a heart-clutching finale that’s as classically restrained as it is emotionally resounding.