In Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch, Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) is living with dementia and is brought to an assisted living facility by the man she can’t quite recognize as her son, Steve (H. Jon Benjamin). As she floats between moments of lucidity and confusion, she begins to acclimate to her new surroundings.
Awards Buzz spoke with Chalfant, who is nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and recently won the Best Actress prize from the National Society of Film Critics, about the moving experience of being part of this film:
“For the most part, the joy of making the movie and the joy of playing Ruth was that the movie is from Ruth’s point of view, and usually movies about dementia and Alzheimer’s and all that are from the point of view of the family or the caregivers, the people on the outside. From the inside, it doesn’t feel like losing in the same way. One of the features of dementia is that you live in the moment and so you’re detached from the past and not looking to the future. That was a wonderful thing to try to explore while doing the movie. And now, to see in my friend Sybille who’s moved quite a long way down this path now and is for the most part non-verbal, not because she can’t speak, but because she doesn’t, except every once in a while, when you go to visit her and hold her hand, she comes from wherever she is the rest of the time, and says things like ‘Oh, hello’ or ‘Oh, I love you,’ or ‘Oh, thanks for coming.’ And sometimes ‘You’re not going to leave, are you?’ I think making the movie made me understand that Sybille, and all people that we know with dementia, are there all the time, it’s just that we can’t access where they are.”
Watch the video above to hear reflections on working with first-time feature director Sarah Friedland and some of her standout past work.
Familiar Touch is streaming on MUBI and available on VOD.
