Touches You

Highly Overrated But Still Good

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

After hearing of the lawsuit that delayed this film's release for 4 years, I was intrigued. The director claimed to have been granted the final say on the film's cut, but the studio was not having it. Another Alien 3, where studio mettling adversely altered the final product? No, not at all. This is just a very bad film.90% of the scenes are conversations filmed in shot reverse shot. These conversations also retread the same subject matter constantly. The other 10% are shots of the NYC skyline with opera music playing. This is not a viable method to give a vapid movie substance. I watched the 3 hour extended cut, and felt every second of its run time.Also worth mentioning are the two extended cameos by the director where he has meaningless conversations with the protagonist (I saw this as if there was a plot) over the telephone.There is absolutely nothing to be gleaned from watching this. There is no underlying message or any substance to speak of. Avoid it like the plague.

This is a film about Lisa, a 19 year old spoiled girl living in Upper West side Manhattan, going to a private school. This is the sort of school where a teacher coming across Lisa and a friend smoking a joint in the park, just tells them off and walks on. They call him by his first name and mimic him. Lisa purposely distracts a bus driver because she likes his cowboy hat, he goes through a red light and kills a woman pedestrian who dies in Lisa's arms. They both say the light was green. She feels guilt. This story is about a moral dilemma (does it matter that she lied, as the woman is dead and the bus driver will lose his job). Her mother is an actress, her father lives in California. They profess concern but don't offer much guidance. The other issue is communication, Lisa's family don't communicate, her friends don't. The film is clunky - ie what is Lisa's mother's new boyfriend's job? 'I help pc's that can't communicate.' Clunk. She has meaningless sex but rebukes a boy who really likes her. He says she's putting him off because love scares her - clunk. There are mad subplots - the mother's affair with a man who loves opera, the cringy scene between the acting class, telling each other home truths, her meaningless sex with a classmate (do you want to come over and deflower me?) The crazy lawsuit against the bus company makes no sense and introduces yet more side characters - two different lawyers, family members etc, who then leave the story. Really just too bonkers to be enjoyable. Anna Paquin overacts - Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo try to calm her performance but it's too rabid. The mother is the best of the lot.

This is an extraordinary psychological story that explores the strange way in which guilt turns into anger, a process that is not necessarily straightforward and is therefore beyond the comprehension of just about everyone who hasn't been through a similar experience. Such understanding even tends to be inaccessible for those who have actually been there unless they're very honest and perceptive or very lucky. I am deeply impressed with both the conception and the execution of this film, especially the writing, but all other aspects are beautifully done: the direction, the acting, the music, the cinematography, every element is worthy of the depth of the story. I'm tempted to call it a perfect movie. What else can I say? Here is what else I can say: If you like movies that feature action stars driving orange pickup trucks backwards at ninety miles an hour, this movie is not your cup of tea.

Okay, I've been through both edits of this now, after recommendations from several readers. I get what he is trying to do. I am writing as someone who prefers the Cannes edit of Brown bunny and who eagerly sat through 3 1/2 hours of The Falls.I think this is a failure, a failure is the sense that the filmmaker had ambitions that may have been unachievable. What he wanted, I think is to have two films merged. One that carried a narrative that mattered and conveyed transformation. And another that conveyed situation, and not just surroundings but an environment that collectively has agency of the same power. You have to see both edits to see this man's struggle; you can compress the first of these because we have all sorts of narrative enzymes in our digestive system. We can fill in things and often are better off with less.It is also the case that you can make an environmental movie with scant narrative. Greenaway does it all the time. Ruiz. Kar-Wai Wong. And if you are willing to have a smaller, more engaged audience, this is achievable in 150 minutes. What Lonergan wanted to do was to have both and have each drive the other. Moreover, he placed himself and his wife as the contacts, a dual fulcrum between the two.There are so many dynamics that are necessary to bind this, to make all the parts affect each other the way he designed that taking any one out ruins the structure. If you did not know his ambition, a viewer would hardly see anything wrong. The Paquin character is great, as are the surrounding actors. The city, the tone, the environment is as richly presented as the best Woody Allen Manhattan-anchored movie. But the environment does not have the coherent agency it needs to do what he clearly intended.I think we have to have a much longer version than 3 hours to accomplish what he attempted. But gosh, the ambition is admirable and all the pieces I can see are amazingly promising. It is no wonder that first rate talent was eager to participate.