Touch Me Not

Adina Pintilie’s film combines drama and documentary (or perhaps quasi-documentary) to reflect on the fear of physical intimacy and how it might be addressed by therapy. One of the central characters is Laura Benson, a middle-aged English woman who speaks of her inability to enjoy sex; she hires a male prostitute but can do no more than watch as he showers and masturbates, after which she seeks relief for her condition through conversations with Hanna Hoffman, a transgender woman, and more physically demanding encounters with an advisor named Seani Love. Meanwhile, Pintilie observes and interviews two men with physical abnormalities—Tómas Lemarquis, who lost all of his hair as a child, and Christian Bayerlein, who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy—as they explore one another’s feelings and learn to appreciate each other’s beauty. We also learn of Christian’s very active sexual relationship with his wife Grit Uhlemann. Pintilie deliberately blurs the line between fiction and reality, setting scenes in various locales (hospitals, bedrooms, therapy workshops) but also often letting her own camera equipment appear in the frame. There is a significant amount of nudity in Touch Me Not, but it is hardly exploited for titillation; rather, the film is designed to encourage viewers to see the physical attractiveness in bodies that on the surface appear disfigured. A strange, thought-provoking film that will certainly not appeal to everyone, this should be considered a strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)