Keswick Film Club - Reviews - Familiar Touch

Our second film of the new season at the Alhambra Cinema in Keswick was 'Familiar Touch' from the USA. A true Film Club film, in fact it was a Members Choice. Understandably perhaps the subject of dementia wasn't great for the box office while those who did come were more than rewarded for their ticket price. It was not an easy watch. The story right the way through makes us asks a lot of questions; personally, I thought how that would be for me and for my family.

An octogenarian woman, Ruth, once a famous chef, transitions to life in assisted living as she contends with her conflicting relationship to herself and her caregivers amidst her shifting memory, age identity, and desires. The film is set in a top-class care home in California so that alone will not reflect the real-life experience of many in Cumbria. It does though explore the uniqueness of each person's actuality of dementia.

The film delicately portrayed one character's experience, the audience made acutely aware of memory's place in a person’s sense of identity, how it can unfairly slip through hands desperate to hold on. The cookbook scene near the end when Ruth recognised that they were her own published books but their significance at once realised and lost, was especially poignant.

The final scene, dancing with her son at the home gives us hope of what living out one's days with dementia and dignity can look like.