Touch’s Filmmaker Found the Love Story He Was Meant to Tell

Filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur recounts in Touch’s production notes that when “reading the novel Touch, I realized this was the love story that I had been looking for.”

Acclaimed for his high-octane action films and television epics, Kormákur worked with the novel’s author, Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, to craft a complex and lyrical romance that reflects the world we live in now. In the film, an older man, Kristofer (Egill Olafsson), leaves his native Iceland to track down the great love of his life, just as the pandemic is shutting down the world. Flying to England and then Japan, his travels are guided by memories of his younger self (Palmi Kormákur) meeting Miko (Kōki), the woman who changed his life.

Moving back and forth in time and across multiple continents, the film is at once intimate and epic in scope, especially in the way it aligns its characters with world-changing historical events. Variety writes, “In Touch, the director’s singular vision is distilled into its purest form within the internal conflicts and connections.”

We spoke with Kormákur about what made this story so important for him to tell.

Touch is now playing in theaters, so get your tickets!

What drew you to this story?

To be honest, the quietness and mystery of the romance. At least, that's what I experienced when I read the book. I loved the way it played with memory and closure, especially as you get older, and the way it traveled through time and space. I’ve wanted to make a love story that was compelling and complex. I loved the way this story took me to places that I didn't expect.

You co-wrote the screenplay with the novel’s author. How was that process?

They say there are three things you shouldn't do in film: work with child actors, animals, or novelists. But I had a good feeling about this collaboration. In the end, it turned out to be one of my best experiences working with a screenwriter. Ólafsson was so generous with all of my ideas and suggestions. I would write some, then he would write some; the whole process was very easy.

The novel is told in the first-person from the older Kristofer’s perspective. How difficult was that to translate to film?

From the beginning, I wasn't interested in using a voice-over to let him explain himself. Instead, I wanted to give Kristofer time on camera to reveal his character through his actions or his interactions with the people he meets along the way. Our work was to translate what he was thinking into what happened on his journey.

In moving back and forth in time, how did you help orient the viewer?

For one thing, we made the period pieces very subtle. Sometimes in ‘70s period films, every object is from the ‘70s, and the story becomes too thick with the period. We really worked on making that period feel very authentic but not calling attention to itself. At the same time, we understood that the period had to feel like a palette of memory. In remembering the past, people mostly recall the good parts and don’t wallow in bad memories. I spoke to a lot of people who lived in London during that time and they all had these very romantic versions of the past.

For the modern period, I didn't want to make it gray and ugly, as if everything was terrible. It took a while to balance the past and the present in terms of how they felt.

The movie is an editing tour de force. How did you get the right rhythm for seamlessly moving back and forth in time?

We took our time editing, maybe much longer than I expected. But a film like this is a giant puzzle. We need to get the different parts to settle together in the right way. When one thing changes, everything changes. We had to keep going through the cut to make sure it all fit smoothly together.

The story is balanced between being a suspenseful mystery and a quiet meditation on the past. How did those two tempos work together?

Throughout the film, the two parts start to talk to each other, each responding to what is happening in the other. For example, as the older Kristopher remembers his youth, he starts to take on some of the younger Kristofer’s free-spirited nature. And parts of the past grow more meaningful when seen from the present.

What would you like audiences to take away from the film?

If there is something unsaid or undone in your life, it is never too late to rectify it. It is never too late.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.