Familiar Touch – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Famil­iar Touch – first-look review

08 Sep 2024

Words by Hannah Strong

Elderly woman's face, eyes closed, serene expression.
Elderly woman's face, eyes closed, serene expression.
Sarah Fried­land’s fea­ture debut is a stun­ning, sen­so­ry-for­ward por­trait of a woman with demen­tia adapt­ing to life in an assist­ed liv­ing facility.

My grand­pa lives in a nurs­ing home, just around the cor­ner from the bun­ga­low he had spent the pre­vi­ous 22 years of his life in – most of them with his wife, until she passed away in March 2022 from can­cer. While our fam­i­ly had sus­pect­ed mem­o­ry prob­lems for a long time, it wasn’t until her death that he start­ed to real­ly decline, and two years after her funer­al, the deci­sion was made to find him a place in a care unit as he was house­bound and injur­ing him­self night­ly. Now he’s in a home, and the staff are very nice, and he is safe and hap­py even though he large­ly has no idea who any­one is or what he’s doing there. Some­times, when my mum vis­its, he’ll ask her, Will you come vis­it again?” or When am I going home?”

This peri­od has been so hard and painful for my fam­i­ly I don’t ful­ly know how to talk about it with peo­ple unless they have been through it too. A few know that my grand­pa had to move into a home because of his demen­tia, and they know I’ve been sad about it. Few­er still have heard me say the awful thing that no loved one of a demen­tia patient is meant to say out loud: it would be eas­i­er if he was dead, wouldn’t it? 

I’ve writ­ten about films that tack­le demen­tia in the past – my great-grand­ma had it too, and in the final stages of my grandma’s can­cer she had steroid psy­chosis, which has sim­i­lar symp­toms. I think a lot about my poten­tial genet­ic pre­dis­po­si­tion towards the con­di­tion, and I joke with my mum (who feels much the same way) that I’d take just about any­thing over slow­ly los­ing who I am. It’s a hor­ren­dous­ly cru­el ill­ness for all involved, and a remark­ably com­mon one: 1 in 9 peo­ple over the age of 65 has Alzheimer’s (the cause of between 60 – 70% of demen­tia cas­es). Yet despite the dev­as­tat­ing impact of demen­tia and the real­i­ty being that most of us will either be diag­nosed with it or care for some­one who is in our life­time, the con­ver­sa­tions around treat­ment, care and qual­i­ty of life are most­ly had in hushed voic­es, through bit­ten lips, as though it’s a fore­gone con­clu­sion that peo­ple with demen­tia tough out indig­ni­ty before they final­ly pass away.

Sarah Fried­land, a New York-based film­mak­er and artist, was inspired to make her fea­ture fic­tion debut after los­ing her grand­moth­er (who had lived with demen­tia for many years) and work­ing as a care­giv­er for artists with mem­o­ry loss. Through her work, she noticed the dif­fi­cul­ty that many have in cop­ing with demen­tia, be it in pre­emp­tive­ly mourn­ing loved ones (some­thing I am guilty of) or in ascrib­ing to demen­tia patients a rigid iden­ti­ty to which they must con­firm (often the role of help­less child-like patient). The film cen­tres on Ruth (Kath­leen Chal­fant), an octo­ge­nar­i­an liv­ing in Brook­lyn, who is moved into a nurs­ing facil­i­ty by her son Steve (H. Jon Ben­jamin) and must adapt to a new lifestyle after decades of fierce independence.

With­out a score to fall back on, the emo­tion­al core of Friedland’s film comes from Chalfant’s mas­ter­ful per­for­mance. We are with her every step of the way, lis­ten­ing to the steady draw­er of her breath, watch­ing as she method­i­cal­ly pre­pares ingre­di­ents for a recipe. Ruth finds com­fort in rou­tines (as many demen­tia patients do) and when she bold­ly wan­ders into the home’s kitchen and begins serv­ing as a line cook, the staff are befud­dled, but Ruth is briefly her old self, talk­ing about her for­mer life as a cook (not a chef, she insists). The glimpses we gain of her old life are sparse and intrigu­ing, but Famil­iar Touch does not rely on the audi­ence learn­ing facts about the pro­tag­o­nist to cre­ate empa­thy. Instead, the film is – as the title might sug­gest – pow­ered by the sens­es, often employ­ing a sta­t­ic cam­era that is con­tent to watch as Ruth and her fel­low patients go about their days.

Where a film like Flo­ri­an Zeller’s The Father – a sub­lime film in its own right – employs more clas­si­cal cin­e­mat­ic” tech­niques to depict the dis­ori­en­tat­ing expe­ri­ence of being a demen­tia patient, Fried­land is restrained, with a sparse, near plot­less script, and a cast of pre­cious few char­ac­ters (Car­olyn Michelle Smith plays Vanes­sa, a sweet and patient care assis­tant, while Andy McQueen is Bri­an, the facil­i­ty doc­tor). Arguably this makes Famil­iar Touch all the more remark­able; there is great emo­tion­al heft to a rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple film, and a dig­ni­ty and empa­thy afford­ed to demen­tia patients (or indeed any­one liv­ing in a care facil­i­ty) that feels aston­ish­ing­ly rare on-screen, where sen­sa­tion­al­ism tends to bring the house down. But with Gabe C. Elder’s bright, light-filled cin­e­matog­ra­phy and Eli Cohn’s evoca­tive sound design, one becomes start­ing­ly aware of the incred­i­ble impor­tance of our phys­i­cal bod­ies, once our minds begin to fray. There is beau­ty in the mun­dane here; a shop­ping list, writ­ten by hand; scram­bled eggs, served in the shape of a smi­ley face; float­ing gen­tly in a swim­ming pool, remem­ber­ing a day some 70 years in the past.

In anoth­er Venice 2024 prize-win­ner, The Room Next Door, Pedro Almod­ó­var pon­ders the con­cept of a good death” mak­ing a stir­ring case for the legal­i­sa­tion of euthana­sia. It makes for an inter­est­ing com­pan­ion piece to a film like Famil­iar Touch, which lacks any sort of melo­dra­mat­ic flour­ish. Both works call for a more open atti­tude to the end of life, and what it means to love some­one who you are active­ly los­ing. I’m not afraid to die, but I am afraid to lose who I am in the process, and while that is some­thing I will have to per­haps face in the future, I am hope­ful that films like Friedland’s can con­tin­ue to widen our col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of what makes us so uncom­fort­able about the process of grow­ing old, and how we can nav­i­gate a world that is inhos­pitable to any­one no longer deemed pro­duc­tive” by the cap­i­tal­ist hellscape we’re liv­ing in. There are no emp­ty assur­ances here; no plat­i­tudes or infan­til­i­sa­tion of the elder­ly. Famil­iar Touch feels rad­i­cal in its qui­et hon­esty, and breath­tak­ing in its dig­ni­fied compassion.

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