Familiar Touch (2024)★ 7.3/10
- Drama
Directed by: Sarah Friedland
Written by: Sarah Friedland
A woman adjusts to her new life in a nursing home and struggles with her relationship with herself and her caregivers.
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Alex SoutheyOctober 26, 2025
Alex SoutheyOctober 26, 2025Aw man :(
Familiar Touch, the new drama from Sarah Friedland, is tender to the touch. Its subject is one that is sure to tug on heartstrings: Octogenarian Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) suffers from serious memory problems. She must transition to life in an assisted living facility. H. Jon Benjamin (best known for voice acting), plays her son Steve. In an opening scene that lays out plainly how lost Ruth has become, she hits on her son, and doesn’t remember visiting–or even picking–the living facility at which she quickly finds herself.
Benjamin exudes the weight of the responsible son. His eyes are consistently wet and heavy, betraying the comfort he wishes to convey to his mother — who is more like a child now than a guardian. Her first night in the new room is unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. Gone not only are her physical possessions, but so are her furnished memories, important to have around to make a house feel like a home. No one likes a first night in a new place where there’s no end in sight to the stay, not even those we as a society deem over the hill of learning and living, apparently content to sit like ornaments that represent family history and semi-abstract wisdom.
Chalfant conveys these inconsistencies of Ruth’s reality masterfully. Her behaviour shifts awkwardly — on purpose — from a poised, self-possessed woman to that of a vacant, confused, sad “octogenarian.” In the latter mode, she emphasizes her age and its apparent betrayals. Ruth, here and there, experiences moments of true recognition: She knows she does not always know how she feels or how she comes across to others..."
To read the full review, head to ThatShelf.com
Familiar Touch, the new drama from Sarah Friedland, is tender to the touch. Its subject is one that is sure to tug on heartstrings: Octogenarian Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) suffers from serious memory problems. She must transition to life in an assisted living facility. H. Jon Benjamin (best known for voice acting), plays her son Steve. In an opening scene that lays out plainly how lost Ruth has become, she hits on her son, and doesn’t remember visiting–or even picking–the living facility at which she quickly finds herself.
Benjamin exudes the weight of the responsible son. His eyes are consistently wet and heavy, betraying the comfort he wishes to convey to his mother — who is more like a child now than a guardian. Her first night in the new room is unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. Gone not only are her physical possessions, but so are her furnished memories, important to have around to make a house feel like a home. No one likes a first night in a new place where there’s no end in sight to the stay, not even those we as a society deem over the hill of learning and living, apparently content to sit like ornaments that represent family history and semi-abstract wisdom.
Chalfant conveys these inconsistencies of Ruth’s reality masterfully. Her behaviour shifts awkwardly — on purpose — from a poised, self-possessed woman to that of a vacant, confused, sad “octogenarian.” In the latter mode, she emphasizes her age and its apparent betrayals. Ruth, here and there, experiences moments of true recognition: She knows she does not always know how she feels or how she comes across to others..."
To read the full review, head to ThatShelf.com
