Touch Me Not

Though not every moment is fascinating to watch, most moments are, and adult audiences should find its frank presentation of the diversity of intimacy thought-provoking and possibly therapeutic.

Touch Me Not‘s commingling of narrator and narrative, character and actor, fiction and documentary suggests that cinema itself is capable of being a manner of touch, the site of a nebulous and freeing encounter between people.

The surprise winner of the Berlinale’s Golden Bear is a film not easily summed up in an elevator pitch. It is, however, a studious, intelligent, if flawed and scattershot, work with an open mind about modern sexuality and intimacy. That open mind will need to be replicated in the audience too.

Pintilie is the opposite of a misanthrope — she’s genuinely invested in opening the mind to the body’s sensations. Keeping it all balanced is where she gets bogged down.

Featuring a mix of fiction and real life, Touch Me Not explores intimacy in an experimental feature film that manages to make sex seem unlikely and tiresome.

Touch Me Not points towards all manner of holistic truths, but leaves them all frustratingly out of reach.

People will want to make their own minds up about the film, but for me there is something worryingly crass and naive in it.