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The desire for acceptance and love is a primordial instinct in humans; from this desire, we build households, careers, and families. When under threat or plagued by insecurity, however, this desire for love can turn into desperation, leading us to doubt those we hold dear. Set in a small town in China, the feature film Touch personifies these demons through the destructive love affair of a Caucasian woman, Fei Fei, who desires above all citizenship in the country she calls home.
By Amelia Moriarty
See the feature film Touch on Tuesday September 28 @ 8:30 PM at Cinema Village (22 East 12th Street) as part of New York City’s 10th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival. Tickets now on sale!
Director Aleksandra Szczepanowska unravels a drama that spins between the pristine family household and the sensuous world of forbidden touch – a massage parlor, a tango bar, and all spaces in between.
Despite her apparent assimilation to China, Fei Fei’s citizenship remains just out of reach. She speaks Chinese, has adopted the dress and customs of an upstanding Chinese housewife, yet she cannot escape her foreignness. As Fei Fei doubles down on her longing for acceptance, she seems to drive away her husband Zang Hua. Her efforts to assert herself into his social circle, such as showing off her skills in calligraphy while at a party, seem only to push him further away. Zang Hua dismisses her requests for help in securing her documents or lies altogether to avoid the topic. He appears more concerned with the image of a stable household and an obedient wife while he disappears for days on business trips or stays out late partying with coworkers. At least, this is the viewer’s impression however clouded by Fei Fei’s insecurities. Questioning the loyalty of her husband, and desperate for some semblance of belonging, Fei Fei happens upon the solution to her unanswered desires, a blind masseuse named Bai Yu.
While Fei Fei basks in the adoration of a man who can recognize her foreignness only by the smell of her perfume, Bai Yu quickly becomes enraptured by this woman who similarly stands on the fringes of society. The affair begins with timid curiosity but quickly unravels as Fei Fei, propelled by her husband’s apparent rejection, seeks solace in Bai Yu’s blindness. Their first love scene fills with flickering candlelight and hot wax, dripping with lust and gasping for air.
Fei Fei quickly realizes, however, that lust cannot replace love, and upon learning of her husband’s own insecurities and his unconditional dedication to her and their young son, must come to terms with the consequences of her betrayal. After jeopardizing her family, Fei Fei cannot so peacefully return. Upon rejection, Bai Yu’s love blazes into a violent obsession, haunting her waking life and dominating her dreams. The film spirals after Fei Fei as she falls deeper into a fever of paranoia, blurring the line between reality and nightmare, fueled by fear and guilt.
The film as a whole, questions the root cause of these demons which plague Fei Fei, whether they are fueled by her fear of Bai Yu taking revenge on her family or something darker, her guilt for having ever questioned her husband’s loyalty, for betraying her family, for seeking security in a man who needed it so desperately in return. By projecting her insecurities onto her family, she became blind to their true intentions, turning those dearest around her into enemies. Throughout the film, symbols of assimilation and cultural deviation permeate. Fei Fei coddles her young son, her one blood connection to China, refusing to send him to live with Zang Hua’s parents. She allows the boy to grow his hair long despite Zang Hua’s chastisement, so that he may look a little more like his mother. Fei Fei would rather bond with her son than follow the status quo by cutting his hair and sending him away.
Additionally, Fei Fei teaches tango, a style of dance that breaks cultural norms by inviting touch with strangers in a close embrace. After losing Fei Fei, Bai Yu begins learning the steps of tango, searching for the ghost of her touch on the dance floor, in the syncopated rhythm and sensuous movements of a dance style which, according to legend, also originated in the murderous love affair between a poor man and an aristocratic woman. As if possessed by the dance’s bloody past, his perfectionism and desperate desire drive him to a frenzy that echoes in Fei Fei’s dreams.
As the plotline begins to blur between reality and nightmare, Szczepanowska exemplifies another type of blurring, a cinematic translation between two cultures, both with their own distinct acting styles and filming techniques. The filming took place in a small town in China, and besides herself playing as the starring actress, Szczepanowska cast entirely Chinese actors and crew placing her in a position demanding constant negotiation between a calculated Western direction style and the more spontaneous Chinese tradition. What’s more, Szczepanowska navigates two audiences who are accustomed not only to different modes of storytelling but also two distinct sets of social norms, a language especially crucial to a psychological thriller largely characterized by social transgression. In many ways, the resulting screenplay stands as a monument to the same conversation across nationality and identity that is navigated by the film’s characters.
Above all, the film represents the desires of individuals living on the fringes of society, the desire to find acceptance and security within an apparent state of instability, a desire which to some extent affects all of us.
Amelia Moriarty
Amelia Moriarty is a writer and artist based in the Pacific Northwest where she works as an editor for the Timberline Review and studies Russian literature at Reed College. Her fiction has been published in Seven Days, Affinity, and The Wellesley Review, and her paintings exhibited with the Waking Windows music festival.
About Winter Film Awards
New York City’s 10th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival runs September 23-October 2 2021. Check out a jam-packed lineup of 91 fantastic films in all genres from 28 countries, including shorts, features, Animation, Drama, Comedy, Thriller, Horror, Documentary and Music Video. Hollywood might ignore women and people of color, but Winter Film Awards celebrates everyone!
Winter Film Awards is an all volunteer, minority- and women-owned registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2011 in New York City by a group of filmmakers and enthusiasts. The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the NY State Council on the Arts.
