5.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A massage therapist is unable to do her job when stricken with a mysterious and sudden aversion to bodily contact. Meanwhile, her uptight brother's foundering dental practice receives new life when clients seek out his healing touch.
Starring: Rosemarie DeWitt, Scoot McNairy, Elliot Page, Allison Janney, Ron LivingstonDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
BD-Live
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
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.
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.
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 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.
2014
Includes "Him", "Her", and "Them" Cuts
2014
2012
One Square Mile
2016
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
2009
2009
2009
2012
2013
2009
2011
2010
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2007
2015
50th Anniversary
1973
2013
1983
2008
2007