Touch Me
Raised in a series of abusive foster families, suffering from OCD and CPTSD, Joey has had neither safety nor stability in her young life, her stress response to try to massage her brain by rubbing Q-tips in her ear canal, her somewhat embittered saviour her best friend at the end of his designer tether Craig who has cruised through life, not without bumps, taking advantage of the wealth of his family whose generosity may be running out.
Bills rising like the tainted water after a plumbing emergency, two equally unthinkable options are on the table: they both get jobs, or Joey get in touch with the man with whom she had an encounter so overwhelming it left her terrified, the hip-hop tracksuit wearing alien who said he has come to save Earth from the climate change which destroyed his own world.
A tale of love, lust, loathing and the self-destructive behaviours of four damaged people, the sharp corners of Touch Me are Olivia Taylor Dudley as Joey, grown nihilistic from exposure to the worst of the world but seeking connection and redemption, Jordan Gavaris as Craig, wanting a quick fix rather than looking for meaningful change, Marlene Forte as Brian’s personal assistant Laura, dutiful but jealous of his new companions, and Brian himself.
Evil Dead’s Lou Taylor Pucci transformed into an uninhibited sextra-terrestrial love guru who expresses himself through dance, despite Joey’s warning Craig is immediately smitten with their earnest host and his amazing ethereal home, while Brian’s probing tentacles endlessly seek new experiences, his absolute directness enchanting to his jaded guests, eager to distract themselves from the emptiness of own lives, willing sacrifices to his temple.
Written and directed by Addison Heimann, Touch Me is deliberately and consciously strange, a film of hunger, obsession and questions of how far someone is willing to compromise what little self-respect they have left in the pursuit of hedonistic comfort, Laura cleaning up the side-effects of those who weren’t able to handle Brian’s excesses with a mop and bucket but Joey and Craig still finding themselves unable to leave him.
Confessions, accusations and recriminations around the dinner table moving to the dance floor, the vampiric glowing crystal chamber and the dungeon, Brian seeks to understand humans but all wear masks of lies and self-deception, the alien a man who is easy to love so long as you allow yourself to be dazzled by his beauty but also a parasite whose growing hunger consumes all around him, love the method the monster uses to distract its prey.
Touch Me will be available on Blu-ray and digital download from Monday 4th May
