Personal Touch 

The first scene in Sara Friedland’s Familiar Touch concentrates on Ruth, an octogenarian woman. Her back is to the camera as she searches through a small wardrobe, finally settling on a simple outfit. Ruth carefully prepares a sandwich for her grown son, an architect, whom she does not recognize and who eyes her cautiously. Their conversation is brief and ambiguous, and the sandwich remains uneaten. It becomes clear that Ruth is in a stage of dementia. Most of the film is set in Villa Gardens, an actual retirement and community memory care facility in Pasadena. Kathleen Chalfant, the 80-year-old veteran stage actor playing Ruth, blends in with the facility’s geriatric residents. (Alzheimer’s patients were unable to participate, as they could not sign releases.) A lot is going on: residents zip around in mobile carts, read to one another to exercise their cognitive skills, attend “dating” nights, and celebrate birthdays wearing party hats. The focus throughout is Chalfant’s sensitive performance; her neighbors add authenticity as well as a sense of compassion to what is an episodic narrative. There is no high drama here, just daily interactions.
In her previous work, Friedland experimented with films about movement and space. Here, she focuses on Ruth’s physicality as she struggles to control and navigate a world that is slipping away: a caress or a distant gaze intimates shifting emotions, at one point a long-lost sense of sensuous amour. Her son Steve (a quiet performance by H. Jon Benjamin) stoically deals with his mother’s changing personality. The film’s title is a reminder of how gentle contact can offer solace beyond words.
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As a former chef, food preparation becomes one way Ruth can exert control. Her caregiver, Vanessa, played with sympathetic precision by Carolyn Michelle Smith, patiently waits as Ruth, suddenly believing herself to be part of the staff, commandeers the kitchen to prepare a breakfast. In one lovely moment, Smith’s Vanessa stares from a window onto the grounds as the worker shares a cigarette with a fellow aide, Steve (Andy McQueen). We can only wonder what memories or distant emotions are passing through their minds.
Ruth is the focus, but it becomes clear that the caregivers — almost all people of color — could not afford such a facility for their own families. In her post-screening Q&A, Friedland acknowledged that less than 3 percent of the population can afford the type of treatment shown in the film. She added that recent cuts to Medicare further devastate the quality of care elders receive in this country.
Films like The Father (with Anthony Hopkins), the early-onset memory tale Still Alice (with Julianne Moore), and Michael Haneke’s Amour focus on the tragic impact Alzheimer’s has on families. Familiar Touch takes another approach, focusing on adjustment and acceptance. Anyone with friends or family with similar issues will be touched by the grace and accuracy of Friedland’s film. (I visited a friend with early-onset Alzheimer’s at a similar facility a few weeks before seeing this film, which made my viewing experience personal.) In addition to awards for Best Debut, Best Director, and Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, Familiar Touch received the juried John Schlesinger Award for Best Narrative Film at the Provincetown Film Festival.