QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM THE RED SEA

Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) was born in 1937. Now in her mid-80s, she remembers her exact birth date, as well as a borscht recipe in minute detail. The exact amount of cabbage, water, stock, and the precise duration of each step. Yet she is unable to recognise her own son Steve (H. Jon Benjamin). She mistakes him for a prospective lover. Ruth is very talkative and full of life. She is even prepared to make a very suggestive advance with the “stranger”: she sensually lays her hand on her son’s leg. She is delighted to find out that Steve is an architect, the same job as her father. She hopes that one day the two men will meet.

Steve moves his mother to a retirement home called Bella Vista. Once at the comfortable and spacious facilities, he spills the beans: he is her son, and she chose herself the place where she would spend her final years. Ruth does not believe him, and responds with a heartbreaking confession: “I never wanted any children”. Steve offers a peculiar rejoinder: “don’t worry, I’m all grown up now and you don’t have to take care of me”. Perhaps the realisation of her condition dawned in her for a few moments. Or maybe not. We’ll never know.

Ruth is in the middle stages of dementia. She often loses connection with time and space. She calls for her mother, she thinks the cafeteria is a restaurant, and that the home is a luxury hotel. She tells the Black nurse that she should meet her brother because “he is very active in the Civil Rights protests”. Care workers Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle Smith) and Brian (Andy McQueen) do their best to offer her some dignity, while also vouching for her health and security. Not always an easy task. They must be be consistently thoughtful. They have to break very painful news multiple times, without breaking Ruth apart. Their affection is mutual: Ruth consoles a crying Vanessa, while also insisting that she’s not “one of those old people you need to look after”.

Our loving protagonist doesn’t do self-pity. She just forges ahead with her “normal” life. She takes control of the home’s kitchen and delivers gingerly hand-cut and decorated dishes to the other residents, assuming she is still a cook. Her humanity, her joie-de-vivre, her subtle humour and her excellent social skills are intact, however hermetically sealed within the confines of memory loss.

Seventy-nine-year old Chalfant’s performance is momentous and miraculous, outshining grandees such as Anthony Hopkins and Richard Gere in recent movies about dementia (Florien Zeller’s The Father and Paul Schrader’s 2024 Oh Canada, respectively). She has the irresistible charisma and the magnetic gaze of Tilda Swinton, if a couple of decades older. She is impeccably dressed, with elegant earrings and the perfect porcelain doll look. She is strong-willed yet never selfish. Sarah Friedland’s firm directorial hand – remarkably precise for a first-time director – ensures that the supporting performances are just as convincing. This was only possible in collaboration with some of the real residents or workers of the retirement home.

Almost entirely devoid of music (except for a couple of dance scenes, including Dionne Warwick’s devastating Don’t Make Me Over), Familiar Touch is a work of extreme honesty and simplicity. It shuns complex narrative antics and technical wizardry in favour of one of the strongest old-age performances you may see in your life. A masterpiece of humanism and humanity.

Familiar Touch just showed in the Festival Favourites Section of the 4h Red Sea International Film Festival. It premiered originally at the Biennale, where it won two major accolade: the Venice Award for a Debut Film and the Orizzonti Best Director prize. While delivering her speech during the event’s closing ceremony, the Jewish-American director famously took the opportunity to denounce the Gaza genocide.