"We Ascribe this Cuteness to Older Women": Sarah Friedland on Familiar Touch

Depicting aging and diminishing mental acuity, with increasing candor about same, essentially has become its own subgenre--the drama of descent or disappearance. Sarah Friedland's Familiar Touch feels like something different, eschewing the conventions of linear decline to stay rooted in the present-tense bodily experience of its protagonist: Ruth Goldman, played by a galvanizing Kathleen Chalfant. Beyond the subjective design of the filmmaking--comprising not just what we hear, but how we under...