Touch

Am I the only curious viewer at the mindset of the director? This first person story sounds like poetry from a broken desperate person, fractured from how you and I exist. A background without traumatic experiences could not have written this, surely.

The depravity we speak of in extreme cinema doesn't do justice like it does here. This movie is truly deprivation without any of the extreme exploitation or Hollywood gimmicks.

You cannot enjoy this movie.

You cannot hate this movie.

The movie just is.

And this movie is so calm, yet so stressful.

I saw this as part of a compilation of gay-themed shorts entitled "Boys Briefs 2," (advertised as stories about "gay first lust") and wasn't prepared for the dark, disturbing tale that unfolds here. "Touch" gives us a fractured narrative about a young teen who was imprisoned and sexually & physically abused by his captor for quite some time. How much isn't really clear, though the occasional flashbacks suggest that the abuser was a man who had been living with the boy and his mother.

What makes this short film so unsettling is that it is completely from the POV of the victim - now freed and living with foster parents. This young man now so identifies with his former captor that he cannot differentiate between real love & affection and being beaten - the two have been so thoroughly entwined in his traumatized head that he is set on a course of constant self-abasement to find his former "lover" again - or some equivalent from strangers.

The point the film makes is psychologically acute, and no less unnerving for being so.

An 8 year old child is abducted and imprisoned for 8 years by a abusive child molester. Since the only human contact he has is in the form of sexual abuse by his captor, he learns to mistake the abuse he receives for affection.

When he escapes he has trouble returning to a normal life and cannot "unlearn" some of the twisted lessons that this life has taught him.

As moving as this story would be from any viewpoint, its first person narrative style makes it truly moving.

I saw this at a film festival with over 40 other films and of everything I saw this was the best film of the lot. It was NOT an enjoyable film but the story it tells and the perspectives it imparts are worth the ordeal of viewing it.

Be careful, this movie is both haunting and thought provoking. It will show you another side of humanity. One could even say that it introduces you to another type of erotic. A lot of life is all about perceptions and relativity. Without being judgemental, you can see almost the opposite of what you may consider reality.

"Touch" is an extremely intense film. The director - or someone central to the making of this film - understand what it's like to be abused over a long period of time and how the effects of that experience persist even after the abuse has ended. It's all voice-over by a boy who goes to sleep in his own bed at the age of eight and wakes up in a bare, dark room. He lives in that room and others like it for eight years, visited from time to time by a man who beats him. (I think it's also implied that the man sexually abuses him.) When he's finally free, the film follows him, showing how (probably permanently) mangled he was by the experience. Very hard to watch. Extraordinarily well done.