Touched

What at first seems like nothing more than a grotesque story of sexual exploitation with provocative sex scenes ends up revealing an underlying layer where the director delicately explores how human relationships can be deeply unsettling.

The film shows how our sexual appetites can shape our behavior in unexpected ways. The nurse submits herself to humiliation in an attempt to soothe her overwhelming emotional and sexual loneliness, while the patient, having no other option, engages in a relationship with a woman he despises.

Both are simultaneously abusers and victims, switching roles in a sad and selfish dynamic.

It's not about nurses and patients. It's about emotionally needy people dealing with emotionally broken people - and about how everything could have been different if the characters had understood that.

The movie is really captivating. It is a great work on many aspects, as Claudia Rorarius treated a great subject in a very demanding and very audacious way. The story itself is deeply moving and dramatic , in this love affair going through all the steps of desire, love, and hate. The director's way of looking at the characters is so impressive, in such a frank and bold manner. The movie industry is full of sex scenes where the director, mostly men, are projecting their phantasms on the audience, putting the spectator in the situation of a peeping tom. It is all the contrary with Touched. Although a lot is shown, it is always supporting a clear statement and a clear look at this developing drama. A look sometimes clinical, always sympathetic and humanist, never trash.

The movie is also served by an amazing photography, with such an interesting research on colors and nuances, which is the mark of a profound artistic research. The structure of the movie and its respirations are also so interesting, those « overflying landscape » commas or the choreography or karaoke ones which are adding references to other arts such as painting, dance or singing. This movie if full of so many dimensions and it is important to mention one of the most amazing, which is the casting: Stavros and Isolde are literally filling the space and the flow of elapsing time, with such a sense of truth! Not to mention the other great cast.

Well written, well structured, well shot, highly dramatic and tender, captivating and audacious. A great cast and team around a vey promising female director !