TOUCHY FEELY (Lynn Shelton) Rating: NNNN
Touchy Feely isn’t as clear and focused as Lynn Shelton’s previous Humpday and Your Sister’s Sister, but it still finds the Seattle writer/director playing to her strengths, putting imperfect characters in small spaces with one another and watching the friction that results.
There’s a little more story this time around. Masseuse Abby (Rosemarie DeWitt) develops a loathing of physical contact, which understandably complicates her plan to move in with her boyfriend, Jesse (Argo’s Scoot McNairy), while her awkward older brother Paul (Please Give’s Josh Pais) finds his dental practice swarmed by people who believe he has a healing touch, and Paul’s daughter Jenny (Ellen Page) struggles with her crush on Jesse.
DeWitt and Pais are great at conveying Abby and Paul’s shared history through a common body language rather than dialogue, and the characters bounce off one another really well. Touchy Feely only stumbles when Shelton tries to wrap everything up a little too quickly in the last act, but I was so invested in the story that it didn’t matter.
