Touch Me Not

"Touch Me Not" - is a film by Adina Pintilie. I have never seen anything quite like it. It will stay with you long after it’s over and it will push even the most open-minded person to place that he or she might not be comfortable going. "Touch Me Not" is not a mainstream movie; this is as art-house as art-house gets. What’s it about? I don’t even know where to start. It supposed to feel and look like a documentary, but it’s fiction. It revolves around a middle-aged woman who seems to have serious intimacy issues – she doesn’t like to be touched, yet seems to crave it. There is a whole fictionalized touch therapy class involving real-life physically challenged individuals; this whole part reminded me of George Lucas’s "THX 1138" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." The film raises questions about our personal relationships with our own body and the bodies of others. "Touch Me Not" is also about voyeurism, sexuality, power relations, kink, and the blurring of truth. There is so much going on here that everyone who watches might end up taking away a bunch of completely different things.

There is something lovely about the pacing of this film – it’s extremely slow, which makes it so personal and intimate. I don’t know how much was improvised and how much was scripted, but does it really matter? "Touch Me Not" is taboo breaking and pushing boundaries, but it does so in such a beautiful sensitive way, that we can face what we would normally find most shocking.
Let it touch you on streaming services or at your local art house movie theatre.