Touch

Directed by Aleksandra Szczepanowska, Touch follows Fei Fei (Szczepanowska), a Caucasian woman living in China, as she embarks upon a torrid affair with a blind masseuse named Bai Yu (Jiangwei Yuan) – with complications ensuing after the man begins to develop an unhealthy fixation on Fei Fei. First-time filmmaker Szczepanowska, working from her own screenplay, delivers a handsomely-shot yet mostly uninvolving drama that feels, for the most part, like a 15 minute short that’s been expanded to feature length, as Touch has been suffused with a whole host of rather misguided elements that collectively conspire to render its few positive attributes moot  – with, especially, the picture suffering from an exceedingly, often excessively deliberate pace that essentially (and effectively) highlights the narrative’s overt familiarity. And although Szczepanowska is quite good in the central role and the movie does boast a handful of striking sequences, including a captivating interlude involving an expansive karaoke bar, Touch generally remains unable to sustain the viewer’s wholehearted interest and attention for more than a few minutes at a time and it’s clear, certainly, that the third-act pivot to Fatal Attraction territory just doesn’t work (ie it often feels like Bai Yu possesses Daredevil-like superpowers) – which ultimately cements the film’s place as an almost watchable endeavor that is, in the end, unable to overcome its myriad of pronounced deficiencies.

** out of ****