Ruth is a retired cook. As the film opens, she’s in her cozy kitchen preparing lunch for a guest, setting the table, and then getting dressed up. The guest is her son Steve (H. Jon Benjamin)—but it’s not long before we realize something is a little off. Ruth is a little too friendly with her “guest”—her coy smiles, odd questions and affectionate gestures make us realize she thinks he’s a love interest. She doesn’t recognize her son.
Familiar Touch is written and directed by Sarah Friedland. Kathleen Chalfant (House of Cards, Law & Order, many New York stage credits) plays the difficult role of Ruth, an aging woman who’s transitioning from being on her own to needing memory care at a senior living center. This beautifully told story is familiar to many of us, of all ages, when it affects a loved one.
During lunch, Steve tells her they’re going somewhere and she chooses to treat it as a lover’s surprise. When they arrive at the assisted living center, she still doesn’t recognize Steve as her son (she even denies being a mom) or recognize Bella Vista. Steve reminds her that she had previously toured and chosen this as her new home. Benjamin’s expressions are heartbreaking as Steve realizes the extent of his mother’s memory loss.
Ruth’s initial days at Bella Vista are fraught with life changes. She requests a menu for her first breakfast; the server tells her gently that this is her dining room, not a restaurant. She meets with Brian (Andy McQueen), a care worker who checks her vitals and asks a few questions. She pointedly reels off facts about herself and her life—and the long list of ingredients for borscht—to demonstrate there’s nothing wrong with her memory and that she doesn’t belong here.
One morning, Ruth rises early, dresses quickly and goes to the Bella Vista kitchen to help the kitchen staff in breakfast preparation. The kitchen staff accommodates her and lets her work on the fruit salad, rather than shooing her out of the kitchen.
Her regular care worker, Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle), is warm and supporting and does much to help Ruth transition to her new life. She recognizes Ruth’s need for autonomy and adjusts her care to allow Ruth as much freedom as possible within the confines of Bella Vista.
Writer/director Friedland, a choreographer and dance-filmmaker, brings Familiar Touch to the screen in her narrative feature directing debut. Her film is set in a southern California retirement center and she filmed it in an actual care center with the help of residents, some of whom appear on screen. Friedland worked closely with the team at the retirement center to be sure the filming was conducted to be comfortable for residents and staff. She held a five-week filmmaking workshop—with the residents making their own films—before production of Familiar Touch began. Her idea was that the residents would be interested in different aspects of filmmaking and could be involved and helpful during production.
Cinematographer Gabe C. Elder creates Ruth’s world within Bella Vista using a bright color palette and often focuses on food, as if he’s reflecting Ruth’s own environment of cooking. We don’t know whether Ruth was a professional cook; she may have been a home and family cook. She tells someone she’s not a chef, she’s a cook. In a scene late in the film, her son Steve is packing up her kitchen and sadly goes over her heavily used cookbooks and handwritten recipes.
Friedland has a sensitive storytelling style as she tells the story from Ruth’s perspective. Friedland, who says she drafted a very early version of this script when she was 19, was working in film/TV production in New York. She answered an ad for a sculptor with dementia who needed someone to be part-assistant, part-caregiver. That led to her working for a caregiving organization that had artists and creative clients and to her returning to her early interest in telling the story of aging people. Friedland’s concept for her story is that coming-of-old-age is a transition as dramatic as that from teen to adult.
Familiar Touch opens June 27 in theaters, including the Gene Siskel Film Center.
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