Familiar Touch
First screened and reviewed in September 2025
Director: Sarah Friedland. Cast: Kathleen Chalfant, H. Jon Benjamin, Carolyn Michelle, Andy McQueen, Joahn Webb, Mike G., London Garcia. Screenplay: Sarah Friedland. In Brief:
Chalfant is surely the reason to see this, but Friedland sets herself interesting challenges and makes good choices.
VOR:③
Productively flexes the Drama of Dementia in new directions: away from empty stares, earlier than rock-bottom, etc. Familiar touch in other ways.
The writing and filmmaking in Familiar Touch are perfectly solid, especially at this price point. The collaboration with an existing memory-care facility is an intriguing approach, never flaunted within the text but conducive to our belief in what we're seeing. While the surrounding ensemble is uneven (across cast members and within individual performances), a few really stand out, such as Andy McQueen as the facility's health monitor and Mike G as head cook.
But the undeniable reason to see this is Kathleen Chalfant's performance, which has to communicate a huge amount about a character who, because of advancing dementia, cannot communicate most of what she wants to and doesn't understand all of what is happening to her, yet is still very present. Chalfant opts not once for blank-eyed catatonia and often favors cheeriness, flirtatiousness, and emotionally prismatic responsiveness, whether Ruth has always been like this or it's her preferred strategy for deflecting alarm (her own or others'). In one scene, Chalfant has to reveal a lot about Ruth's personality, her history, and her agenda as well as her fears in this specific moment, and her only vehicle for doing all this is a minute-long recitation of a borscht recipe. And it's an unforgettable scene, as is another where Ruth tackles a one-minute memory exercise, and you can't quite tell if she thinks she's nailing it or failing it, nor is it entirely clear how a person would fairly judge that. A parking lot epiphany, a home-cooked meal, a wordless look of what seems like desire for one of her caretakers... The performance is just a marvel, played out across the body where so many actors and directors consign this type of story almost exclusively to the face. It's also a rare gift, given how seldom this stage legend has alighted on screen. B
(I originally wrote this review on Letterboxd, where you can comment.)
