Touch Me Not

This is one of the most dull, boring and annoying films I've ever sat through. It's about intimacy and connection ironically. Laura (Laura Benson) has problems with it. It's very cold. Analytical and often uncomfortably so. Large parts of it feel more like a documentary, others so clinical they've had the life strangled out of them. I didn't enjoy it and considering the subject it's trying to tackle, I think it fails miserably. It's exploitative rubbish wrapped up in a pseudo art house construct. Perhaps for that reason it looks quite good in places, well shot in a minimal style and there's some interesting bits of sound. That's not enough to save this though. Laura is the focus as she wades through scene after scene exploring different approaches to sexuality. I'll be fair Benson does rather well. She's believable and seems completely immersed in this. I feel bad for her in that her performance is wasted. In fact I feel for everyone involved, aside director Adina Pintilie for inflicting this. She appears to have a history in documentaries which explains a little. She also stars here, which doesn't really explain anything at all. It's stark and soulless. The longer it goes on, the more annoyed I get. I've nothing really nice to say about it, so I'll just finish by recommending that this is to be avoided.

I am on the fence with this one. I could say that it brilliantly exposes deceit and vanity, and wouldn't be that far off. I could call it an honest, if flashy and sometimes arrogant, exploration of failed intimacy on a pedestal, and I think I'd have a point there. I felt at times that it was indeed full of vanity and self-importance. Since, luckily, I didn't see the movie on my own, and saw it without knowing anything about it, I found the experience led to an interesting conversation. In the end, I'd say it was a so-so movie, but a worthwhile experience.

How you were loved reveals how you love. Since guilt and fear often get in the way, Touch Me Not explores the real experiences of some who set out to widen their horizons, break conventions and confront prejudices. "With maybe 15 to 20 years of good health" one asks, "do I want to continue as I am living?" The film explores different perspectives on human relationships and opens new doors and possibilities of body and mind. Daring, personal and raw, Touch Me Not proceeds in voyeur-like fashion and invites dialogue about intimacy. Winner of golden bear at the Berlin film festival. North American premiere seen at the 2018 Toronto international film festival.

Touch Me Not is (for me,) one of those types of films that grows on you after viewing it, be that good or bad. In my case it was a good thing. It's not a perfect film, there are parts (the over-use of white for one thing) that smacks a bit of pretentiousness (again to me), but this is a beautifully filmed movie, and the central character, I found interesting, and I wanted to journey with her as she lived out her quest to come to terms with demons from her past (I will say no more), and find peace within herself and move forward... her comment about being fifty and understanding her limited time of full health, and her need to live those dwindling totally healthy years, truly healthy (body and mind), really rang true. As a new director, I am interested to see where she can go next. In the year of #metoo and #timesup, it's win at Berlin could be construed as an homage to that, but I feel in many ways it did deserve its wins for showcasing these ideas in a very intelligent manner. There are moments in the film (the "therapists" sessions and one part of the sex club scene...again, no more as to spoil anything), that left me with mixed emotions, but I think it was my own thoughts, comfort levels and preferences that were influencing and projecting onto the scenes. It was these types of instances that drew me to like this film, for a movie that can make me question my ideas and perceptions is all right by me.

I'm not the kind to leave the cinema or to quit watching a movie. On the contrary, I'm probably the only one who wants to see absolutely all films ever been made, in full, some of them, which I love terribly, many times. That's what I've done all my life. Also, I'm no bashful, inhibited, prude or easy to be scandalized by nakedness, nudity, sex, etc., on the contrary, I prefer bold, non-conformist films, just like in real life, the unsimulated life. That's what Mrs Pintilie is trying to do with this production, but she does not succeed, the film is a shouting platitude to the sky. The only success is that, not knowing the actors (I had to check on IMDb who is really actor, I first thought they are non-professionals because they all look so real... I still don't know if some are actors or not... anyway, this is not the problem, even the great Fellini used to prefer non-professionals, Pasolini too, and others...). Being a Romanian like Pintilie, I enjoyed enormously when I found out that she won the big prize in Berlin, I asked for her Facebook friendship (she didn't accepted me - I'm OK with that), I was hoping to meet her in London at the Romanian Cultural Center (but she didn't come), just to tell her that I want to work together, all this before I've seen the movie. Now that I've seen it, I know clearly that I do not want to work with Adina Pintilie. She only has to do many other series with the same actors or non-actors from her debut. I'm also very disappointed by the decision makers of the Berlin Festival to award the Golden Bear to this production. But I have the same feelings for Cannes and Oscars for many years: we live in a very sick world.

The most amazing, intelligent movie I ever saw. Thank you thank you thank you!

Movie that shocks for the love of shocking. Disappointing and at best few ideeas to keep in mind. Or i don t get contemporany cinema wich is really plausible.

I really wanted to like this movie. The premise seemed intriguing, and divergent opinions (when clearly thought out, and not basic "genius" or "garbage" labels) usually signal the movies I want to (and should) watch. The framing, lighting and even music (can't go wrong with Einsturzenden Neubauten) are very good, and the movie starts out well enough on its exploration of intimacy and distance. Its a bit predictable that it veers into sex-based themes (a la "Eyes Wide Shut", if that film were really trying), which I suspect may have annoyed some people. Although I thought it was not "earned", That didn't bother me at all, the (excruciatingly) slow pacing, the connection between scenes, the underdeveloped characters that are hard to identify with (with one or two exceptions) and the fragmented editing did. It's hard to reach intimacy without, at the same time, building walls even as they are being torn down, and life can be slow, fragmented, unconnected, hard to identify with and underdeveloped. But its the map vs. territory argument: a film is not life. My main issue is that this is a film that clearly seemed profound to the filmmaker and actors, and I'm almost positive that the experience of making it was enlightening to them. But it seemed like a private, hermetic, enlightenment. As a viewer I would have to have been interested in the characters and situations; somehow invested in what little developments did happen. And, in the end, to me they weren't really all that interesting.

A brave film that puts things, people, dimensions and perspectives on the table of truth, things that we do not look at easily, we do not look at at all or look with too much judgment and prejudice. I loved Laura from start to end, she kept the film in her hand in an extremely difficult role, an excellent actress that I would love to see in other productions. I also liked the music and cinematography, as well as the director's passion for innovation and experiment, her overall curiosity for life and courage to jump in the unknown. "Touch me not" is not a movie to fall in love with and not for people who live life at its surface, but it is a necessary, human and useful film, a movie that stays with you and raises new questions if you leave yourself open and allow it, if you accept the journey the director proposes to you. My opinion is that the film deserves its Golden Bear award, and because it's also a debut film for the director, the performance is even more impressive. I expect Adina Pintilie to return in the coming years with surprising productions as there's a lot of potential in her.

First of all, after reading some of the comments posted here I'm surprised in this day and age the nudity and scenes of sexuality in "Touch Me Not" were shocking to so many people; I never felt that these scenes were done in an exploitative manner and they seemed natural to the film's theme. I left the theater, however, wondering why this film was made in the first place and what its point was. It touches on so many issues involving intimacy but never seems to focus on any of them long enough to come to any clear follow-through. The director's style seemed almost stream of consciousness at times and it added to the fragmented and disjointed feel. As an example, I thought the relationship that evolved between Tomas and Christopher seemed to be the most fully realized one in the film; Tomas expresses how this has changed his perspective of himself, but still seems flat and emotionless. At the end of the film Laura appears to finally come to an epiphany of some kind, but there weren't enough details for me to really understand why. Did Pintilie shoot without a script and a vague idea of what she wanted and then attempt to form a film in the editing room? It feels that way. "Touch Me Not" is an intriguing and sometimes fascinating experiment. It's a film is about emotions, but it felt distant and flat to me.