Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.0

Touchy Feely Blu-ray Movie Review

Kinda Sorta

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 11, 2013

Writer/director Lynn Shelton achieved critical acclaim and modest success with her two features Humpday and Your Sister's Sister, both of which charmed viewers with Shelton's gentle, insightful and humorous take on unusual relationships. Both films, however, had conventionally structured plots that proceeded from point A to some sort of resolution at point B. In her latest film, Touchy Feely, Shelton wanted to try something different. Invoking Short Cuts and Hannah and Her Sisters, Shelton tried to create a multi-stranded narrative following multiple characters with different stories criss-crossing each other and sharing common themes.

As with Hannah, Shelton built her story around a family. Each of its three members has a different predicament and is played by a memorable performer with a distinctive presence. Shelton also created three "outsider" characters whose interactions with the family could generate conflict, drama and comedy, just as Woody Allen used various husbands, ex-husbands and boyfriends to provoke Hannah and her two sisters. The potential was all there.

But something went wrong. One watches Touchy Feely waiting for some kind of story—any story—to catch fire, but as soon as something seems to be starting, it fizzles while Shelton switches her attention elsewhere. If you listen carefully to the commentary and interviews included in the Blu-ray's special features, it's clear that the director and her cast had a clear sense of each character and his or her individual arc. The movie they describe sounds intriguing, but it's not the movie that Shelton ultimately released.

Shelton was an editor before she became a director, and contrary to her previous practice, she edited Touchy Feely on her own. In her commentary, she so often describes removing scenes from the film that one suspects there is a whole other film that a different editor with a fresh eye might have assembled. Directors and actors who participate in the creative process, especially one that involves substantial improvisation, know too much about the characters and their stories. For them, a gesture or an expression may convey volumes, but an audience needs more. Among Touchy Feely's many flaws, its most obvious is that it doesn't give the audience enough opportunity to get to know the characters before exploring their eccentricities. The exposition is so weak that it's not even clear at first how the three are related to each other.

Touchy Feely finds Shelton returning to Seattle, whose overcast skies, tidy streets and tolerance of fringe lifestyles provide an ideal backdrop for the twin stories that, according to Shelton, are the film's core. Abby (Rosemarie DeWitt) is a massage therapist with a thriving practice, magic hands and a younger boyfriend, Jesse (Scoot McNairy), who manages a bicycle shop and whom Abby doesn't quite take seriously. Her brother, Paul (Josh Pais), is a dentist who inherited their late father's practice and is Abby's polar opposite: traditional, uptight and repressed. He disapproves both of Jesse and of Abby's lifestyle in general, but he doesn't seem to notice (or refuses to see) that his own dental practice is withering away, as old patients die off and no new ones arrive. Paul's daughter, Jenny (Ellen Page), works as his assistant, and she keeps urging him to advertise, but he won't hear of it. As for Jenny, her life is going nowhere.

Now, the overview I just provided is much clearer and more succinct than anything a first-time viewer is likely to glean while watching Touchy Feely. Part of the reason I could present it is because I've listened to the commentary and watched all the extras, but without them I wouldn't know which parts of the film its writer/director considered central. There's a substantial amount of plot relating to Jenny and the frustrations of being her father's keeper (and if you're going to cast Ellen Page, you should expect her to make whatever story she inhabits memorable). But one of the reasons why Shelton's casually observational style doesn't translate to a multi-stranded narrative is that everything plays at the same pitch. As a director, she can't differentiate tonally between the stories, and as a writer she hasn't drawn the lines between them with sufficient clarity. Jenny's story, like Jenny herself, gets overpowered by her father and aunt, each of whom seems to forget she's there.

Probably the reason Shelton regards Abby and Paul as the two main characters is that they experience mirror-image problems: Abby suddenly find herself unable to give massages, because she is repulsed by human skin, whereas Paul gains a huge following among patients suffering from the painful jaw condition known as "TMJ" when he just inexplicably acquires a healing touch (which he steadfastly denies). The reasons for these parallel developments are never addressed, but they probably have something to do with what, in "touchy feely" parlance, would generally be called intimacy issues. Abby's friend Bronwyn (Allison Janney), a Reiki therapist who mixes Abby's massage oils and to whom Abby sends Paul, would probably say that both siblings needs to rebalance their energies.

Touchy Feely is a frustrating film, because the characters are interesting, and you learn just enough about them to suggest they might inhabit a much better and more developed film than the one that Shelton made. Near the end, Ron Livingston appears as Adrian, a man from Abby's past who seems to hold some sort of key to the constraints holding her back in her life and work. But he's gone before we get much of a chance to know him or what he and Abby meant to each other. One suspects that the actors and their director worked out the whole story in detail, but either it didn't get shot or it disappeared in editing. Too much of Touchy Feely plays like that, and when it's over, you find yourself asking what happened.

Touchy Feely Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For Touchy Feely, Shelton reunited with her cinematographer from Your Sister's Sister, Benjamin Kasulke. No information was available about the type of equipment, but the image has much the same digital look, which is a step below films shot with top grade professional cameras like the Red or the Arri Alexa, but is still pleasingly sharp and detailed. On the plus side, Touchy Feely is free of the occasional distorted shots that appeared in Your Sister's Sister.

Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray delivers a clean and noiseless rendition of the film, with a realistic palette that aptly represents overcast Seattle as well as the various interiors and their distinctive styles, from the stuck-in-time household where Paul and Abby grew up (and Paul now lives with his daughter) to the aging hippie accents of Bronwyn's domain. Blacks and shadow detail are well-rendered, which become especially important in two parallel scenes near the end of the film, when both Paul and Jenny go out separately to evening functions (a concert and a rave-like dance party). Contrast is never overstated.

Since the film is only 88 minutes long, Magnolia could have compressed it down to fit onto a BD-25, but as is their usual commendable practice, they have opted for a BD-50 and gentler compression. The average bitrate is 30 Mbps (and no, that's not a rounded figure). It's probably more bandwidth than this modest film requires, but it's better to have it and not need it than the reverse.

Touchy Feely Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with Your Sister's Sister, composer Vinny Smith also served as mixer and sound designer. On the commentary track, Shelton notes several points where Smith's music could easily be mistaken for sound effects. Except for specific songs composed for the film or selected from the alternative music scene, the music of Touchy Feely is intended to blend into the film's sonic texture and become part of the general mood. The Blu-ray's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 track wraps that sensation delicately and unobtrusively around the viewer without any effort to call attention to the presence of the surrounds, or even the stereo separation in front. Dialogue remains paramount for Shelton's films, and it is mostly of the quiet kind, as befits her style. Even when one character visits a loud party with a pounding dance beat, the soundtrack plays a contemplative ballad being sung at another location across town, where other characters are listening

Touchy Feely Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer/Director Lynn Shelton, Rosemarie DeWitt and Josh Pais: The commentary focuses primarily on the shooting experience, with some discussion of how the characters and their stories developed through exchanges among the cast and Shelton. The most obvious virtue of the commentary (if it can be called a virtue) is to provide greater insight into the characters and their background and motivations than can be learned from the film itself. Shelton also makes frequent reference to her struggles in the editing room ("struggles" being my word, not hers) and reports how a friend who saw an early version told her she was making a drama, not a comedy—and yet she and her two stars frequently can't help but laugh at what happens on screen.



• Outtakes (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:12): Allison Janney and Josh Pais experiment with the "connection" between Paul and Bronwyn. In one short take, Ron Livingston surprises Scoot McNairy.



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 6:30): There are four scenes. The first three, which involve the main characters, might have strengthened the film. It is unclear what was intended by the fourth, a lengthy scene at a Seattle bus stop, but it may have something to do with a quick insert of Ron Livingston's character that survives in the completed film.



• Interviews (1080i; 1.78:1; 31:51). A "play all" feature is included.
• Allison Janney
• Scoot McNairy
• Josh Pais
• Writer/Director Lynn Shelton



• AXS TV: A Look at Touchy Feely (1080i; 1.78:1; 3:02): This standard AXS promo relies on footage from the longer interviews listed above.



• Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:19): Obviously struggling for an angle, the marketers attempted to focus on a romantic rivalry that is substantially downplayed in the final edit.



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for Drinking Buddies, Prince Avalanche, Best Man Down and Mr. Nobody, as well as a promo for AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back later for updates".

Touchy Feely Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Touchy Feely is a well-produced Blu-ray, and Lynn Shelton remains a filmmaker whose future work I look forward to seeing. But Touchy Feely doesn't work, and I can't recommend it.