Excellent but underrated film

Best movie ever!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

"Touch" brings us into the world of Sadism and Masochism from both points of view. The concept of the masochism enjoying the masochism is what earns "shrinks" a living. However, the psychoanalysts of the "why's" is not my concern at this moment.What concerns me is the timing of the years that lapsed between being held captive at the age of 8 until his release and entering high school. Was he educated during those years? The film indicates not. So, how could he go into high school ready for academics with no educational background?

"Touch" is an extremely intense film. The director - or someone central to the making of this film - understand what it's like to be abused over a long period of time and how the effects of that experience persist even after the abuse has ended. It's all voice-over by a boy who goes to sleep in his own bed at the age of eight and wakes up in a bare, dark room. He lives in that room and others like it for eight years, visited from time to time by a man who beats him. (I think it's also implied that the man sexually abuses him.) When he's finally free, the film follows him, showing how (probably permanently) mangled he was by the experience. Very hard to watch. Extraordinarily well done.

I saw this as part of a compilation of gay-themed shorts entitled "Boys Briefs 2," (advertised as stories about "gay first lust") and wasn't prepared for the dark, disturbing tale that unfolds here. "Touch" gives us a fractured narrative about a young teen who was imprisoned and sexually & physically abused by his captor for quite some time. How much isn't really clear, though the occasional flashbacks suggest that the abuser was a man who had been living with the boy and his mother.What makes this short film so unsettling is that it is completely from the POV of the victim - now freed and living with foster parents. This young man now so identifies with his former captor that he cannot differentiate between real love & affection and being beaten - the two have been so thoroughly entwined in his traumatized head that he is set on a course of constant self-abasement to find his former "lover" again - or some equivalent from strangers.The point the film makes is psychologically acute, and no less unnerving for being so.

From the very first scene, this film is dark, and engaging as the viewer finds out what is going on, and then is immediately put into the mind of the central character.The film explores a harrowing experience and one that in many ways is so horrific it is unmentionable. I found the tone, dialogue and atmosphere almost addictive, however the plot moves almost single-mindedly to a pre-determined end without much deviation. This is probably because it is a short film.Not for the faint of heart - but I felt compelled to keep on watching.