Familiar Touch

Familiar-Touch
Familiar Touch

What seems like a typical date for the eighty year old widow, Ruth ends on a high note when a younger man, who is an attractive sustainable architect shows up. Although she embarrassingly forgets his name at first, Ruth quickly shifts her mind and cooks salmon and cream cheese on toast for brunch before enjoyed by her companion on a mystery trip. While checking into the hotel, she finds the lobby nice and cozy but is unsettled by the calm voice of the hostess and the way her date calls her mom. I am not a mother, she states. “I did not want to give birth.” The balance between extreme embarrassment and strong affection is well captured in the character of Ruth, a character that Sarah Friedland exhibits through the entire 91 minutes of the film Familiar Touch where her debut is remarkable.

Several moments before Ruth’s (an outstanding Kathleen Chalfant) arrival at Bella Vista, an elegant assisted living home which isn’t very far from her beautiful yet life-encompassing home located in the suburbs of Los Angeles but could have well been on the other side of the universe viewers already know Ruth’s fate. There’s no romantic Foxtrot here, however, as it is her son, Steven (H. Jon Benjamin), who brings her in and hands her to the nurses with tear-prone indeed dry moments that we know will shatter the moment he leaves his mother’s gaze. And it’s not a surprise attack because Ruth saw her doctor when she was advised of these premises before and even praised them. But looking around the new and uniform light beige room, she feels like her life has been overthrown, relocated to an indifferent yet also amicable hostile place, despite the kindness from her new caregiver Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle).

Familiar Touch, a film which premiered in the Orizzonti section in Venice introducing a host of other festival engagements, and not doubts much distributor interest as well, is not for the first time in a recent spate of movies from The Father to Relic to Dick Johnson is Dead in the same light. Emerging out of increasing hardships and trauma of being a caregiver to someone suffering from dementia. This is a condition which is usually struggled in movies with on-screen portrayal in a tv film soft focus and a large amount of psychological deceit in the representation of the character. None of these styles are employed by Friedland. It is a conventional character in this milieu, there is no sugary sentiment, but the emphasis of the film is on Ruth’s voice it is not the story from the viewpoint of a victim or a patient, but a capable woman who still perceives herself that way most of the time.

As Ruth settles in Bella Vista, the developments in the story Familiar Touch bring with them the memories of the character being a stranger in a different environment. It feels like she is going to a new school and has no idea whom she can turn to for help; an array of unknown faces seems intimidating and without any structure to social interaction, disconcerting. She sometimes doesn’t know where she is or what’s going on, and in such situations, she would rather fabricate a story instead of facing the uncomforting fact that she is lost, which is why she crudely calls Vanessa and the doctor in residence Brian (Andy McQueen) her friends instead of helpers.

In some instances, however, she completely cuts off that time in her life Used to working in a professional kitchen, Ruth often strolls into the kitchen of the facility like she is arriving for a shift at the diner she owned. (At least for one morning, her fellow residents appreciate the enhanced breakfast.) Infrequently, however, she gets interjected with the realities of the present time often at the wrong place and moment: Steve, he’s my son, she exclaimed one morning while having a shower and to no one in particular because it was not the right place for such revelations. “I don’t have to remember it, I leave that to my mind.”

Without excessive description or elaboration, Friedland manages to illustrate what Ruth, the woman, mother, and wife was like in her earlier years not too different, she remains a proud, nurturing, and independent woman, though she is often perplexed by other’s overwhelming failure to perceive her quite like she perceives herself. Vanessa, however, manages to perform and transform with Michelle as a comforting fortress of tough love but sometimes, doesn’t fully allow professional boundaries while looking at Ruth through a daughter’s lens with unresolved issues of her own. Ruth is aware that there are other people and there are other stories outside of hers, even if those stories do not quite form full circle in her mind.

Familiar Touch however does not go for the cheap old people say the darnedest things comedy aimed at Chalfant’s performance whose depiction of Ruth is neither a buffoon nor a tragic figure although it does bear some slant irony at Ruth. Most known in Theatre, the actor somewhat perfectly depicts the variations in the character, her muscle tension, and body postures that showcase the struggle to keep her thoughts and speech orderly amidst many shifting states of consciousness.

Physically, she is also more relaxed and alert when feelings or memories come to her more easily like the time she remembers taking some therapeutic pool, dancing slowly with her son, or offering her recipe books where she remembers writing some of them. Friedland’s film, both tender and brutal captures the fear of losing the familiar life and the infrequent thrill of glimpses of finding it again.

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