A film
review by Peter Debruge, Chief International Film Critic for Variety.com, January 20, 2013.
Trading
her improv-based filmmaking style for a more traditional screenplay-grounded
model, Lynn Shelton delivers
an uneven mix of half-formed conflicts in Touchy Feely. Set in
her hometown of Seattle, this mystifying dramedy involves a masseuse who
develops an unexplained repulsion toward
human skin, a fuddy-duddy dentist spontaneously granted the healing touch, and
a handful of others affected by a sudden energy shift in their lives. It’s not
much to go on, but the promise of Shelton’s previous features, Humpday and Your Sister’s Sister, should draw
optimistic audiences, just as it did this higher-caliber cast.
Peculiar
in the way it expects audiences to figure out the basics — characters,
settings, situations — Touchy Feely
takes the time to establish Abby (Rosemarie
DeWitt) as a successful massage therapist, then cuts to a family kitchen
where she and three others make small talk. The awkward older fellow is her
brother, Paul (Josh Pais); the
casual young woman is his daughter, Jenny (Ellen
Page / Elliot Page); and the scruffy third wheel is Abby’s boyfriend Jesse (Scoot McNairy) —
though it’ll take audiences rather more detective work than it should to sort
out these connections, likely a carryover from Shelton’s unscripted earlier
work, where exposition is often delivered on the run.
The
figure-it-out-as-you-go approach proves too oblique here, as the film fumbles
for strands worth following. Jesse invites Abby to move in with him, which
could potentially lead somewhere, but doesn’t. Later, while sitting on the
toilet, Abby picks at her knee, and notices that skin — which she touches daily
in her line of work — is kinda gross (especially when filmed with a hi-def
macro lens). This discovery implies the need for either a career change or a
cure for her sudden aversion, neither of which is provided in the haphazard
script. Likewise, the picture attracted such eclectic collaborators as Allison Janney and Page, but gives them
too little to do.
Whether
by coincidence or some sort of greater karmic design, at virtually the same
moment Abby finds physical contact revolting, her dentist brother Paul gains
the miraculous ability to heal pain, particularly as it manifests in the jaw.
Virtually overnight, patients begin flooding his previously deserted office
like pilgrims to a shrine. The two siblings couldn’t be more different in their
personalities or beliefs, which seems to be the point: Though their appearance
and acting styles essentially belong in separate movies, they represent a
yin-yang dynamic, and when the balance shifts for one character, it upsets the other.
On the
sensitive end of the spectrum, DeWitt’s screen presence is open-minded, deeply
empathetic and intuitive. Her every look draws audiences into her character’s
unusual personal conundrum; Pais, by contrast, is a gifted physical comedian
who amuses with routines that verge on the vaudevillian, but hint at little
emotion. His skeptical visit to Abby’s spiritual adviser is funny, but he
doesn't seem to live in the same world as his co-stars.
Considering
the film’s interest in holistic hocus-pocus, this world defies traditional
storytelling logic, presenting receiving-end challenges compounded by Shelton’s
awkwardness as editor in conveying location or time. At certain points, the film
lingers on a scenic shot of Seattle for half a minute, implying what seems like
a great passage of time, only to cut to a scene later the same day. Elsewhere,
the film withholds exteriors, causing inadvertent confusion, as in an orphan
scene between DeWitt and real-life hubby Ron
Livingston set heaven-knows-where, or the unintentionally alarming reveal
of nice-guy Jesse’s house, which looks like a crack den.
Elliot Page came out as a transgender from Ellen Page on Dec. 1, 2020.
Elliot Page came out as a transgender from Ellen Page on Dec. 1, 2020.
Labels:
drama
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