Touch is vast in scope, stretching over decades, languages, continents, and cultures, with themes of memory, aging, loss, and love. But its sensibility is as exquisitely tender as the flutter of a butterfly wing.

Kristófer (Egill Ólafsson) is an elderly widower and restaurant owner in Iceland who visits his doctor to talk about some diminishing of his memory and fine motor skills. The doctor orders an MRI and gently suggests that this might be a time for Kristófer to consider any unfinished business or any unresolved issues he may wish to address while he still can. This brings on a flood of memories of Kristófer’s first love when he dropped out of graduate school in London and went to work in a Japanese restaurant. He decides to go to London to see if he can find her 60 years later. This is all happening in March of 2020 when the world is shutting down in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and his daughter makes increasingly worried and frustrated phone calls, but Kristófer does not have time to wait.

As he travels and investigates, we travel back and forth in time between the present and the past to see the young Kristófer (Palmi Kormákur) and Miko (Yôko Narahashi) in 1960s London. 

The film’s embrace of compassion and forgiveness for everyone is heartwarmingly spacious. It shimmers with grace.