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‘Touch’ review: An Icelandic romance with a serious spark

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The time- and -location-hopping "Touch" stars (from left) Egill Ólafsson, Palmi Kormákur and Kôki.
Focus Features
The time- and -location-hopping "Touch" stars (from left) Egill Ólafsson, Palmi Kormákur and Kôki.

Every week, Kristopher Pollard from Milwaukee Film and Radio Milwaukee’s Dori Zori talk about movies — because that’s what you do when you’re Cinebuds.

Even if you really love movies, you likely have at least one genre that’s sectioned off with caution tape. For Dori, it’s romance. So when Kpolly approached her with an unapologetically romantic selection for this episode, her instinct was to turn tail and head the other way. Then he said the magic words:

“It’s Icelandic.”

OK, not the most traditional of magic words. But it was at least enough to pique Dori’s interest and get her eyeballs on the film at the center of their conversation: Touch.

This story from household name Baltasar Kormákur is miles away from the rom-coms that have very nearly ruined romances for Dori. It’s a decade-spanning journey one man takes to track down his first love, and of course there are very dramatic stakes involved. There are also not one but THREE languages featured in the film, which allowed our Cinebuds to check off the rare “trilingual Icelandic romance” off their genre bucket list.

So did Touch completely restore Dori’s belief in love (or movies about love anyway)? Or was it an obvious attempt to get her to cry in public? Find out by hitting that “Listen” button at the top of the page or finding Cinebuds wherever you do your podcast-enjoying.