Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Sarah Friedland
Starring: Kathleen Chalfant, Carolyn Michelle, Andy McQueen, H. Jon Benjamin
The cruelty of neurodegenerative disease, such as the form of dementia which the octogenarian lead character of Sarah Friedland's sober and sensitive drama Familiar Touch suffers, is the increasing ambiguity of the condition; the spiteful disparity of "good days/bad days," the capriciously looping severity. The person you loved being slowly erased, but not - at least until the very and sudden end - completely so. Hence, you both cling to the reminders, the dwindled memories of the person they were and almost still are, and it is a pain which tests the limits of love. In Familiar Touch, Friedland and her central actor Kathleen Chalfant (Ruth), provide an unflinching and discomforting exegesis of the phenomena (which, by the way, one in three people will develop in their lifetime), as it essays the frustrations of a sufferer persisting with the confused remnants of her being with resolute dignity.
Familiar Touch opens with the sharp intimacy of an older woman getting ready for the day; she dresses herself, performs ablutions, checks herself in the mirror. We transition to her making what looks like an incredible lunch, her "signature sandwich" comprising of a precise arrangement of salad, condiments and bright pink meat upon a bed of springy bread: you'd love someone to make you food with such care. She presents it to middle-aged Steve (H. Jon Benjamin), and chats amiably with him, expressing wonder at his job as an architect and intelligently interacting, and it is all very non-committal until it dawns on the viewer that Steve is Ruth's son, and that she no longer has any understanding or memory of their connection, who exactly he is, or, indeed, the nature of the "surprise" he has planned for her.
At what point do you capitulate, and accept that she's never coming back? That things have reached that point? The assisted living facility where Steve leaves Ruth has the same sort of pleasant but insistently bland interior that they all have (and, for contemporary audiences, accidently evokes Backrooms); the nurses are kind and industrious; her fellow patients are at varying stages of happy resignation. The closing credits reveal that Friedland worked closely with the residents and staff of the real-life Bella Vista care home, and the outcome of the co-operation is evident in the delicate, straightforward depiction of Ruth. A lot of the narrative consists of extended and non-causal sequences of Ruth in the home: going about her business, swimming, sitting at a communal dining table. The film forces us to see her, her corporeal reality, challenging how we would in real life, if we were to be honest, perhaps prefer to look away.
In a recurrent rhyme with the opening sequence, food becomes a source of meaning for Ruth. Compos enough to recognise the hospital's mass-produced sustenance for the slop it is, she storms the canteen and commandeers the counter. She can recite a recipe for borsch from memory, and a nocturnal escape attempt takes her to a convenience store for a late-night food shop. The kitchen is where the heart is, after all, and we are never closer to the meat of what makes us as when we are preparing the elements which nourish the lifeforce of ourselves and those that we love. It becomes ingrained, these alchemic rituals of ingredients and process. Chalfant's absolute and brave commitment to the role sells Ruth not only as a sufferer of dementia but as someone who has made many sandwiches: who has provided, and loved, and been loved back.
Further to this, Familiar Touch explores the ramifications of age, and how senescence becomes a second form of childhood as the home instigates uncanny facsimiles of the real world to occupy the residents. Patients are encouraged to partake in the sort of arts and crafts that my primary school aged nephew would consider gauche, and, most mortifyingly, set up a speed dating night ("Who's ready to fall in love... TONIGHT?"- send me to the grave). Throughout, the film plays off Ruth's reactions, which range from nonplussed to accepting to equivocal. Friedland's camera consistently focusses on her subject, upon the full elderly glory of her whiskers and wrinkles, forcing us to recognise not only Ruth but the steadfast reminder that age is the price we will all eventually pay for the experience of living.
Familiar Touch is in UK/ROI cinemas from June 19th.
