Review of The Touch (1971) by Katia B — 12 Sep 2010

?The Touch? by Ingmar Bergman (1971) is a film about how the very experience of personal love can heal emotional trauma. Lover as a psychotherapist is not an easy role - in passionate love there is not enough distance for disinterested observation and understanding. But Karin (Bibi Andersson) is able to do the impossible ? she transforms the very area of love between two into a magic point of sharing wisdom through her enduring and inexhaustible vulnerability. Her love toward her younger partner in existential encounter is a model of psychological wholeness ? it includes romantic, sexual, motherly, purely emotional and intellectual aspects in tune with one another. Bergman demonstrates that sometimes separation of lovers is a victory of love, not a defeat. ?The Touch? is Bergman?s ?Hiroshima Mon Amour? ? another film about personal love as psychotherapy.

After finishing watching this film you again and again return to the meaning of the characters? actions and emotions and the film?s visual symbolism, and understand more about their personalities and human life as an incredibly rich and beautiful philosophical drama. Please, visit www.actingpitpolitics to read articles about Bergman?s ?Through Glass Darkly? (with analysis of shots from the film), and also analysis of films by Godard, Bunuel, Kurosawa, Alain Tanner, Resnais, Pasolini, Cavani, Bertolucci and Fassbinder.

BY Victor Enyutin.