Two young women directors of great talent, who hardly anyone has ever heard of, have films soon to open in Manhattan, and that is an event I want to call attention to and celebrate. Films that really stir the viewer are for me few and far between these days, and both of these films were big, moving experiences. Not easy ones, however, and certainly not with easy subject matter. But after the long decades I have spent in the Berkshires with few films worth seeing, it is so gratifying that Great Barrington finally has the first-rate cinema operation it deserves (with much gratitude to those responsible, for The Triplex purchase and for the great risk-taking programming), and so these two fine films will hopefully show up here.
Sarah Friedland is a young American director, and “Familiar Touch” is her first feature film, so it is all the more remarkable that she has done it so well. She has put in her time though, made a number of shorts, and served as assistant to some interesting directors, among them Kelly Reichardt, so good and so humanly honest in a way that may have influenced Friedland. The film centers on a very elderly woman, Ruth, played brilliantly by Kathleen Chalfont, as she is compelled by memory loss to move from her bright, cheery house into a care facility, and to adjust to that change. Friedland speaks of watching her grandmother go through a similar experience, and she researched the film by working as a care companion for some New York artists with dementia. She talks about having wanted to make a coming-of-age film for an older woman.
Friends of mine shrank from the idea of seeing a film with this subject matter, but for me, films that come close to my own age and possible experience (plus in my case that of a very old dear friend who had Alzheimers for years) draw me to them. A beautifully made film focused on this material is not depressing—it is an important and moving human experience. I felt that way about “Away from Her” with Julie Christie, directed by Sarah Polley, and still more about “Amour,” by the German director Michael Haneke with Jean-Louis Trintignant. But it is a rare American filmmaker who would take so much time, look with such concentration on the beautiful old-woman face of Chalfont, who would catch her verbal dexterity, wit, and humour, her dismay, her silences, her unravelling and mortality, her dignity and grace. That camera looks and looks at her, her 80-year-old body, her old hands, the beauty of her with all that. The film is seen entirely through her point of view. And happily, with many Jewish names in the credits, it allows Ruth a Jewish last name and some believable Jewishness, unlike, say, Barry Levinson’s “Avalon,” or even the great “Death of a Salesman,” whose creators by casting or naming erased the signs of their Jewish family origins.
There is much that could be said about Ruth’s interactions with her son, with the staff of the care facility, with other residents, the shifts from pain to playfulness (though the film doesn’t take us deep into pain). All through, engaging things happen, but one of the most moving is just watching this woman lovingly name and touch, one by one, the fruits and vegetables in front of her. In a quiet kind of celebration, Chalfont is extraordinary with the lightest of touches, and Friedland is never maudlin, never sentimental, no false notes, the story of old age seen as just part of the human story and as vital to be told in its richness and truth. If Sarah Friedland can continue making films this way and refuse the usual seductions, she will be an exciting figure to watch in future American cinema. “Familiar Touch” will be shown as part of the Lincoln Center New Directors series on April 2 and April 4 and will come out in Manhattan theaters in July.
The second really striking woman director who has a film coming out very soon is the Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili. I reviewed her film “April,” which is her second film, in my October 2024 annual coverage of the New York Film Festival. You can also watch her being interviewed at the Festival online. Her film, totally different from “Familiar Touch,” is shocking, dazzling, haunting—the story of a woman gynecologist in the provinces. There are astonishing scenes of a live childbirth, of an abortion, sexual assault, troubled oppressive family lives, the doctor’s own strange personal struggles—women’s bodies, primal, embedded in the primal beauty of the natural world. This director also carefully researched this film by watching scenes of childbirth and following doctors on their visits to poor and narrow-minded households. Though unmistakably grounded in actual experience, it is all done in an unusual, sometimes even surreal, poetic way, by a director with a unique vision. She conveys a far-away world but not so far after all—intimate, powerful, and memorable. This film opens in New York City theaters on April 25. I hope both films make their way to the Berkshires or that interested viewers make their way to the city to see them.
