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Familiar Touch Is an Infinitely Tender Movie About Dementia
Kathleen Chalfant is astonishing as a woman who moves to a care facility after she is no longer able to live alone.
In the opening scenes of the film, the quietly wondrous feature debut of writer-director Sarah Friedland, that playful lilt creeps into Ruth’s voice as she has a younger man over for lunch at her sunny California house, overflowing with plants and books. But Familiar Touch is something more generous — an account of dementia not as an end but as a period of transition for Ruth, as she leaves her home behind for an upscale care facility called Bella Vista that, Steve reminds her, she chose herself. Chalfant is one of those acclaimed theater actors who has never found the same showcase for her talents onscreen, and the delicacy of what she does in this role is astounding, transmitting Ruth’s tumultuous state of mind without words and making us aware of the whirring of her brain as she, say, puts a slice of toast in the dish rack and then looks at it for a while, sensing that something isn’t right but unable to figure out what.
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