2/5 stars Touch , a cross-cultural romance spanning 50 years and told in three different languages, follows an ageing widower as he embarks on a globetrotting search for the young Japanese woman he fell in love with decades earlier. Set at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Touch opens as Kristofer (played by Icelandic musician Egill Olafsson) discovers his memory is fading and, heeding the advice of his doctor to resolve any unfinished business, sets off for London, despite the imminent threat of a worldwide lockdown. Through a series of flashbacks, we meet the younger Kristofer (played by the director’s son Palmi Kormakur) in London at the end of the 1960s.
Disillusioned by the contemporary political landscape, he drops out of university and takes a job washing dishes at a Japanese restaurant, where he is taken under the wing of the proprietor, Takahashi (Masahiro Motoki). He meets Takahashi’s beautiful daughter Miko (model Koki, also known as Mitsuki Kimura, the daughter of Japanese pop icons Takuya Kimura and Shizuka Kudo) at the restaurant, and the pair soon begin a passionate affair. The structure of Touch sees the events of the past and present converge in a climactic revelation that explains why Kristofer and Miko’s relationship ended.
Suffice to say, Miko and her father fled Hiroshima shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped in August 1945, with the dream of starting a new life in London. Try as they might, the lingering impact of the event and the stigma .