Critic Reviews

Friedland’s film, as sharp as it is soft, conveys both the terror of losing the life you recognize, and the intermittent, fragmented joy of finding it again.

To miss it would be to overlook a rare and compassionate work of art, not to mention one of the most honest, heartfelt performances of this or any other year in motion picture history.

Friedland’s acute debut feature, drawn from her experience in the memory-care field, is a small miracle of realigned empathy, turning away from the condescension and easy sentiment of so many narratives about late-in-life adaptation.

The way Friedland subtly works in these little touches is truly impressive. But her finest achievement here may be casting Chalfant, who gives an astonishingly nuanced, considered and graceful performance.

Chalfant is a stellar lead, to say the least.

Chalfant is one of those acclaimed theater actors who has never found the same showcase for her talents onscreen, and the delicacy of what she does in this role is astounding.

Films about dementia don’t tend to figure on audience’s good time viewing lists, but Familiar Touch is rather special – it shows the ravages of the disease but maintains the dignity of the sufferer.

In the end, Familiar Touch reveals itself to be less about the agonies of change than in the concessions we make to feel closer to our loved ones and ourselves.

Familiar Touch, its title perhaps a tacit acknowledgment of how well-worn this terrain is, illuminates its protagonist’s condition with uncommon concision and grace, and with few of the formal and narrative strategies we’ve come to expect.

Familiar Touch is a film about forgetting, but it’s also a reminder—as moving, sincere and gracefully unadorned as any I’ve seen in some time—of the actor’s art.