Release Date: September 6, 2013 (Limited)
Now playing on VOD platforms
Director: Lynn Shelton
MPAA Rating: R
Film Pulse Review: 3/10
I was surprised to find out that Touchy Feely was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Lynn Shelton’s writing and directing is all over the place and her fine cast is woefully misused and seems lost most of the time. It is a disappointing film because there are moments of potential, particularly with the movie’s strong opening scenes. Sadly, it quickly begins to drag and come undone.
Abby (Rosemarie DeWitt) is a massage therapist who seems both successful and happy in her work and her life. She is in what appears to be a strong relationship with her boyfriend (Scoot McNairy) and even plans on moving in with him. At some point, for some inexplicable reason, she loses her ability to have physical contact with anyone – so, she stops providing massages and can no longer touch her boyfriend. She appeals for help from her friend, Bronwyn (Alison Janney), who is a Reiki specialist. Bronwyn provides tonics and elixirs as well as performing channeling to balance out Abby’s energy, her “chi” as it were.
The other two principal characters are Abby’s brother, Paul (Josh Pais) and his daughter Jenny (Ellen Page). He is an uptight dentist whose practice is failing and Jenny is his hygienist, although we know from Abby that Jenny is not happy in her work and wants to go to college and move out of her father’s house. Paul will eventually visit Bronwyn and learns the art of Reiki from her. But before that, he somehow helps a patient who is an acquaintance of Jenny’s – Henry (Tomo Nakayama) – who had been suffering from TMJ (a disorder of the jawbone causing pain in the muscles and joints of the mandible). It is unclear how a family dentist “healed” Henry and then numerous other patients of TMJ when he does nothing special or particular to address the problem. For a while, his practice booms as people with that issue turn up for help and seem to be helped by whatever Paul does – that is until a previous patient comes in a publicly denounces Paul as a fraud in front of his patients.
Does any of this sound interesting? It shouldn’t. The film is incredibly boring and nonsensical. At one point, a man from Abby’s past – Adrian (Ron Livingston) – appears out of nowhere and the two reconnect. Their scenes last about five minutes and make no sense in light of what has come before or what comes after. It is during their meeting, it seemed to me, that Abby had finally taken ecstasy which Bronwyn had given her earlier in the film.
Did the ecstasy pill “cure” Abby of her inability to “feel” and touch or be touched? I wonder, because almost immediately following her few moments with Adrian she magically becomes her old self again and reunites with her boyfriend. The entire film is really about characters who are desperate to feel something and be in touch with their feelings about themselves and about others. And somehow as the film goes on, Abby, Jenny, and Paul do become in touch with their feelings. How this happens is rather mysterious and for Abby in particular, it happens seemingly in the blink of an eye.
The film’s resolution with Abby, her boyfriend, Jenny, Paul, and Henry sitting down for dinner all healed of their issues and problems comes too quickly and without any real understanding. I was confused by nearly every scene, not because Shelton had given me anything to really think about or chew on, but because the film seemed to have no grounding. Shelton’s script and her cast were unmoored from naturalism or truth. DeWitt, Pais, McNairy, and Page have all been much better, and I suggest you find other films with them because Touchy Feely is far too unsatisfactory and a waste of 90 minutes.
