[HanCinema's Film Review] "Touch - 2012"

Dong-sik (played by Yu Jun-sang) is a recovering alcoholic. That's not an easy position to be in, coming from an employment culture where drinking is how after hours business networking starts. Dong-sik tries to be a good person, but the temptation of booze is a constant one, and under its inebriating influence all sorts of things go wrong for the man and the people around him, violent injuries and death being a constant theme. If nothing else, I certainly needed a drink after some of the more discouraging sequences in "Touch - 2012".

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The world this film presents to us is an unsettling one. Dong-sik's wife Joo-mi (played by Kim Ji-young) doesn't have a drinking problem, but is constantly faced with hostile uncaring people at work and near home. This wouldn't be quite so unnerving except that Joo-mi's profession is caregiver. So whatever her immediate motives, what we end up seeing are doctors and nurses who seem to, at a basic level, despise people.

The intertwining stories of "Touch - 2012" tend to bring out a lot in the despair department, building a world where kindness seems incomprehensible. A final scene involving some apparently sociopathic emergency room staff appears absurd in its sheer callousness. Now, in full context their reaction does make sense- but it says a lot that these people still come off as believable even in the moment.

There are some moments of hope scattered throughout here, but they're never terribly convincing ones. Dong-sik and Joo-mi frequently try to do good deeds only to be faced with misery and scorn. Some of it may be deserved sure, but it's difficult to really want to get back up and keep trying to be a good person when everything just seems to end in a new level of miserable disaster.

"Touch - 2012" is ultimately a narrative about a really bad day. It's a film that covers the malaise of an everyday life where everything seems to be going wrong, and where the choices seem to be limited to killing yourself slowly or killing yourself quickly. In some cases this is literal. The spectre of death is a common one, but there's nothing romantic or thrilling about these sequences. It's the kind of death we as real people are more likely to see on a regular basis. The cause may be an accident, disease, or a trap, but in all cases there's that long lingering sensation of knowing a life going to end, but not really knowing how or when. It's not a pleasant feeling, and in these moments "Touch - 2012" does excellent work quickening the heart rate, making the viewer feel that same sense of general visceral fear.

All that's really left to look forward to is that innocent fawn. A constant recurring metaphor, the fawn has no apparent fear of people, constantly showing up in places it should not, in a sort of naivete as to the very real danger in the human world. Whenever our lead characters see the fawn, there's this sense of serenity and hope. But by the end of "Touch - 2012", all that remains is that harsh impression that the only way things will get better is to keep trying. Even if there's no warm happy feeling for being a good person, no praise from others, you have to keep trying.

Review by William Schwartz

"Touch - 2012" is directed by Min Byeong-hoon and features Kim Ji-young and Yu Jun-sang

 

Available on DVD from Amazon