Touch Me Not

Only half a review…because, the exploitation and pseudo-intellectual guff [not to mention the mind-numbing monotony] was/were – simply - too much to bear…for a further 65 minutes. Yes, we actually sat through the first 60 minutes trying not to scream at the screen! Exhausting…and, to think, this won the Golden Bear and the Best First Feature Award @ Berlinale!

Call it what you will: An experimental, cathartic, arthouse, some kind of docu-drama hybrid…it is – in fact – a very effective, quick-working, brain-killing barbiturate…battling sleep was the only thing that kept 'us' awake throughout the first hour!

Laura Benson states that she is 90% terrified of…and, 10% ‘kind-of-comfortable’ with…filming. Only sado-masochists would be ‘comfortable’ to watch this ‘character’ indulge in her quest – usually via sex workers – to break down the [mighty] barriers of her intimacy problems! Sweetness, there are therapists that can do a [much] better job than this cathartic indulgence!

If the ‘director’ had not been so self-absorbed, Touch Me Not could have/should have been an absorbing and touching [pardon the pun] look at intimacy through various percspectives…instead, rather than feeling the 'humanity' that is intimacy, she went for the ‘shock’ effect – wrong direction, resulting in a disaster of a film. Who knows, it may have become a master-work in the second part, hence the awards…but, when you can’t retain an audience, this particular audience member embraced disinterest and walked out...thereby, saving the audience from uninhibited and unbridled snoring!

Trailer...