John Bleasdale Guest Contributor At the Taormina Film Festival, Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur spoke to Variety about romantic drama “Touch,” his adaptation of the novel by Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson.
The film was released last week in the U.S. by Focus Features, earning rave reviews and a 93% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Previously Kormákur has filmed Idris Elba versus a lion in “Beast,” and Jason Clarke and Jake Gyllenhaal versus a mountain in “Everest,” but in some ways this story of an old man, Kristófer, reconciling with a lost love as he faces early-onset dementia was just as daunting. “My daughter gave me the novel for Christmas, and this piqued my interest, but she didn’t say much about what it was.
Then I started reading about this old man looking back on his life, and slowly but surely it started tightening its grip on me.
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