FAMILIAR TOUCH - Mark Reviews Movies

Familiar Touch, Music Box Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 19, 2025

The first shot of Familiar Touch observes a woman going through her closet, trying to decide what to wear that day. It's a perfectly ordinary event, seemingly irrelevant to a story except to highlight a sense of routine. One will surely notice that Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) cannot decide which clothes to choose, which is also quite a normal part of this routine, and that she also returns to look at the same clothes at least twice. That part is important.

The entire prologue of writer/director Sarah Friedland's debut feature becomes an act of observing. The camera watches as what should be mundane acts at the start of someone's day subtly and, then, unmistakably transform into something else entirely. Ruth chooses her clothes, but then, she sits in her bedroom, not getting dressed. She goes to the kitchen to start making food, but then, she seems genuinely surprised when the toaster pops. She takes the toast, but then, she brings it over the sink, put it in the dish-drying rack, and goes back to work on the meal, as if the placement of the toast is the most ordinary thing in the world to do with it.

Obviously, Ruth has dementia, caused by her age or an unspecified ailment, because the reason itself is unimportant to Friedland's story. This is about the reality of living with degenerative memory loss in a plainly portrayed but, as a result, quietly tragic way. The film doesn't attempt to trick us or replicate the experience. It just shows what dementia looks like for Ruth, the people who know and love her, and those who now have the full-time responsibility to care for and look out for her.

Its most effective sequence is that prologue, which establishes Friedland's method for telling this story, while also serving as its own isolated and heartbreaking narrative about Ruth's last day living at home. Much of the impact of the scene is in the subtext. With those three or so shots, Friedland makes Ruth's condition it clear, and with the arrival of a man named Steve (H. Jon Benjmanin, the comic actor with an unmistakable voice making a striking impression in a dramatic role), everything gradually turns.

For one thing, Friedland doesn't need to tell us who this man is, what his relationship to Ruth is, or why he has come to her house this day. She does eventually, when the final moments of the sequence arrive, but as soon as Ruth's condition becomes undeniable and impossible to avoid, there is only one answer to whatever uncertainties exist here.

That Friedland doesn't communicate any of that directly, however, is part of the reason this entire scene is so devastating. We know who Steve is, what's happening in a conversation that sounds on both ends as if this is the first time these two people have met, and, as soon as the man tells Ruth that it's time for the two to take a trip, where they're going. The answers exist between the lines of the discussion and on Steve's face when, for example, Ruth says that she hopes the man will be able to meet her husband one day. The gentle way Steve responds that he has met Ruth's husband, with his eyes saying so much more, is all the revelation we need.

Indeed, the soft, thoughtful, and compassionate way the man handles the entirety of this process sets the tone and mode of the rest of the story. Ruth does arrive at a facility for assisted living, from which Steve exits with characteristic grace for the way Ruth's mood instantly changes. From there, responsibility for Ruth passes on to the staff, primarily Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle), a nurse with seemingly infinite patience and an equal amount of tenderness, and the on-site doctor Brian (Andy McQueen), whose bedside manner provides a calming presence in troubling times of confusion and frustration.

There are no other revelations or developments in the rest of the story, except that we notice Ruth's condition gradually worsening. Through that, we learn more about her past, as she seems to become lost within it in her waking moments, and continue to observe how life for the character becomes a new series of routines. There are a few deviations, when confusion or reality set in for her, but eventually, that new process of routine slowly fades away, almost unnoticed because Friedland and editor Aacharee Ungsriwong intentionally keep the passage of time as a constant but unspecified fact. Days surely pass here, but as for how many and over what period of time, it's impossible to track.

Chalfant's performance is full of life, as she reverts to her old job as a cook at one point in the facility's kitchen and connects with Vanessa beyond the necessities of their relationship, and that choice is just as vital to the film's success as its atmosphere of care and kindness. The sorrow here isn't in watching Ruth deteriorate, forgetting more and more or experiencing some transformation in her personality. Instead, it's in seeing a lively person and knowing what's to come. Friedland doesn't avoid harsh reality, such as a scene in which Ruth wants to know the truth after an episode and, even though she understands in that moment that she'll spend the rest of her life in the facility, is struck to the core at hearing it directly told to her.

The emotional impact of Familiar Touch is in that frankness, yes, but it's also in the subtle, seemingly uneventful course of its story. This is the new reality for Ruth and everyone connected to her, and Friedland simply but sympathetically shows it for what it is.

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