‘Touched’: Thessaloniki Review

Dir/scr: Claudia Rorarius. Germany. 2023. 133mins

This intimate slowburn drama from Claudia Rorarius aims to subvert audience expectations about sexual relationships while exploring both the positive and negative possibilities of its title. Built upon the emotionally and physically intense performances of Icelandic model and body positive activist Isold Halldorudottir and disabled dancer Stavros Zafeiris – both making their big screen debuts – Rorarius demonstrates a simultaneously light touch in terms of style and tight grip of her themes. Her challenge to ableist viewpoints is a lot more sexually frank than many other films on similar subjects, like The Sessions, but the stars’ shared Golden Leopard for performance at Locarno Film Festival, where the film premiered, should help propel this film to further festivals after it screens in Thessaloniki’s International Competition.

Aims to subvert audience expectations about sexual relationships

Touch is a necessity for Alex (Zafeiris) ever since an accident left him paralysed and in need of help to do most things. At first his new care assistant Maria (Halldorudottir) is shy about getting physical with him, especially when it comes to his intimate care needs – brought home by her palpable apprehension as she is instructed on how to help him urinate. Things shift, however, after she rescues him during a suicide attempt and the pair tentatively embark on a clandestine relationship. 

Everything about the two of them is in contrast. Alex seems almost impossibly tiny compared to Maria’s larger frame, but it is he who experiences shame about his physical state whereas Maria seems comparatively unfazed by being overweight. The power dynamic, meanwhile, pulls this way and that. Initially, it seems that Maria must have the upper hand, quite literally, as she is able to touch Alex without him being able to brush her off but it is soon obvious that Alex has the stronger emotional leverage. 

Rorarius makes the pair’s mutual desire for intimacy evident, but questions of how much this stems from a need to escape loneliness and how much from a genuine wish to be with one another remain up for debate. While Maria seems accepting of Alex’s differences, his own struggle to come to terms with his accident often puts him on the attack – he is more judgemental both of his own physical state and hers. 

There does come a point where it seems incredible that this relationship is being conducted in the medicinal pink halls of a care facility without being discovered – Rorarius seems to sense this and inject a moment of realism involving a second care assistant (Angeliki Papoulia). Yet the writer/director more generally relies on her audience not asking too many questions in that regard, focusing instead on the heat of eroticism in the couple’s most caring moments and the sense of danger stemming from their more destructive interactions.

Dance is used as an expression of desire, with Rorarius employing individual tracks rather than traditional scoring to fuel the mood. We see Maria perform a sensual ballet routine for her own pleasure at home to Donna Regina’s electro and ethereal ‘Lass Uns So Tun’ (’Let Us Pretend’), which she later reprises in very different circumstances. We also see her singing karaoke to tracks including Cyndi Lauper’s ’Time After Time’, her voice filled with longing for something Alex may not be willing to give. Rorarius invites us to join in the pair’s emotional dance together, twirling us around until established expectations blur, preconceptions fall away and we are left increasingly uncertain as to what will happen if and when the music stops.