An interpersonal attraction that transcends conventional notions of love, sex and age shapes Paul Cox’s Human Touch, a beguiling new film from the iconoclastic Dutch filmmaker who has spent most of his career in Australia. Music teacher Anna (Jacqueline McKenzie) has reached an impasse in her relationship with her painter boyfriend David (Aaron Blabey) and finds herself increasingly drawn to Edward (Chris Haywood), a much older artist for whom she agrees to pose. Edward’s interests (like Cox’s) are less lecherous than exploratory, and the film develops into an intriguing exploration of the erotic properties of creation and the aesthetic possibilities of the body. As critic Scott Foundas noted, ‘Cox may have as progressive a definition of beauty as any filmmaker working today. When he turns his camera on the world, he finds varying degrees of age and decay, and in each its own unassailable splendour.’