So much to love

By Scott Foundas
Film Editor

Julie Davis' "I Love You...Don't Touch Me!" is one of those independent films-of-the-moment where the behind-the-scenes story of how the project made it from the page to the screen threatens to eclipse the film itself in terms of sheer drama and tension.
That's because Davis, 28, realized her labor of love through a most circuitous and unlikely route (the latest USC grad to get a feature made she's not). Born in Miami, Davis later graduated from Dartmouth University (of all places) with a fellowship grant that she put into making her first short film. After that, Davis traveled to Los Angeles, where her initial attempts to break into the business by selling scripts met with little success. Undeterred, however, Davis began a second career as an editor of ultra-low-budget Korean action movies shot on 8-mm film stock and, later, as an editor of commercials and re-editor of hard-core pornographic films for the Playboy Channel. Ultimately, she put together the $64,000 she needed to make her film.
Fortunately for Davis, like Robert Rodriguez and Nick Gomez before her, the story doesn't end there. "I Love You...Don't Touch Me!," it turns out, is an unexpectedly sly and witty spin around the romantic comedy block, with a couple of deep truths told along the way about the fickle nature of modern true love, which sets it apart from many of the similarly personal, yet stilted and indulgent first films from independent directors that make it to festivals and art houses every year. With "I Love You...Don't Touch Me!," you never get that cloying sensation that there's only one person out there that the film could possibly mean something to and that that person is the director.
Davis does tell a fairly familiar ugly duckling story about Katie (Marla Schaffel), a twentysomething Angeleno lounge singer looking for love in all the wrong places, never pausing to realize that the perfect mate is right under her nose in the form of her loyal, but not spectacularly wealthy or handsome, best friend Ben (Mitchell Whitfield).
What sets "I Love You...Don't Touch Me!" apart, though, is Davis' wry way of looking at the world, which is strongly expressed in her dialogue (sort of like a female Jerry Seinfeld, to use a clich) and nervous, experimental and always kinetic visual style. That the film belies its minimal production cost is only an added bonus -- further tribute to Davis' rising talent.
Best of all, in Schaffel and Whitfield, Davis has found a couple of breakout talents who engage us from the beginning and hold our attention even through some of the slowest and most tired spots in the story. In particular, Schaffel has a wonderfully offhand charm about her that just lights up the screen. Her screen persona is both contemplative and intelligent, always keeping you wondering what she's thinking and what she'll do next.
To be sure, "I Love You...Don't Touch Me!" doesn't work all of the time, and much of what does still feels like it's a rewrite away from something more narratively substantial. But Davis' ambitions for her first film are small, and in that respect "I Love You...Don't Touch Me!" delivers on its most emotionally intimate moments, which is what really counts for a film like this anyway. Davis gives us a fresh take on a standard-issue romantic-comedy scenario and also delves deeper into the psychological motivations behind who we choose to date and why. All of that is a lot more than you might expect from a film like "I Love You...Don't Touch Me!," and it's what makes Davis an upstart filmmaker to keep an eye on.