..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Human
Touch

Written & Directed by Paul Cox

Ambivalence is the overall emotion I feel coming out of Paul Cox’s latest, Human Touch. But that is made up of a distinct combination of pleasure and discomfort.

The film is, as we expect from Cox, about the condition of human connection. He is one of the few filmmakers in the world who has the guts to make movies that both acknowledge and celebrate aging. But the downside, particularly in the last couple of films, is that an aggressive defensiveness has started to emerge. Age is not just to be respected and honored, but young people are just too dim to really make a human connection, distracted by sex… well, men are anyway.

Women, whom Cox focuses on, like Jaglom, seem to be an ongoing mystery. He gets the patter down quite accurately. But there are no answers. And perhaps that is the answer to women. But I don’t think so.

The journey of Human Touch is believable. A young woman, played by Jacqueline McKenzie (returning to Aussie indie cinema after being slapped down unkindly by Hollywood), is an artist in a good relationship with another artist (Aaron Blabey), but they hit a wall when she is confronted with the aura of an older artist, played by the great Chris Haywood as a kinder, gentler Picasso. Every woman wants to possess this aging genius, but alas, none can have him… only his money and his wisdom. Oh, the irony!

And here is where I got a bit ticked. Cox doesn’t pretend that this man is not attractive because of his wealth and detachment. But we are meant to believe that he is a great talent… yet his photos look like horny harem shots done on a digital camera by a college student. Ms. McKenzie, who is not a great beauty, has always been a powerful on-screen presence because her inner beauty and her pert attractiveness more than carries the day. But here we are asked to see a transformative experience and the work is not up to it. The notion that it is all banal and surface seems too much for the filmmaker to offer, even if it inevitably moves toward that end.

Cox walks us through the process of navigating a sagging relationship that has strong moorings and that is quite wonderful to see on a movie screen. Filmmakers just don’t do it very often. But looking back on the film, the long road traveled leads back to progress by emotional denial, not by insight. And while that is the truth of most of life, one does not get the feeling that this is the message that Mr. Cox intended.

This is a film that might improve in memory. And there is every chance that it will be more accessible on DVD or TV than as a theatrical experience. There is an uncomfortable feeling that Mr. Cox has created an elaborate framework on which to hang his personal feelings about how honorable it can be for men over 60 to sexually advance on women under 40. When a comparison of equity between a trip to the prostitute while a woman is withholding sex for months in a relationship to that woman engaging in intimacy with an older male sponsor - explaining that the encounter set her free sexually - is made, one wonders whether it is supposed to be character bluster or an attempt to rationalize something Cox believes.

- David Poland