Geoff Andrew

“The Touch is a fine companion piece to the film that preceeded it: En Passion (1969), which is generally known in English as The Passion of Anna but would be far better translated as ‘A Passion’, as it’s protagonist is not Anna (Liv Ullmann) but the reclusive divorcé Andreas (von Sydow), who undergoes a passion in the biblical sense of a process of suffering. He, like Karin [in The Touch], is touched by the interest shown in him by a new acquaintance and responds by trying to give - and hence receive - love; like Karin too, he finds that such an ambition is not that easy to achieve, since other people are not always as straightforward or accepting as we’d like them to be.

Like The Passion of Anna, The Touch ends on an image of solitude, indecision, immobility - but also of freedom and open-endedness. A pause before an unknown future; a moment of truth and self-awareness. A glimmer, then, of hope.”
― Geoff Andrew