Touches You

Such a frustrating disappointment

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Blistering performances.

David Mackenzie's Perfect Sense is one of those films that is indeed almost near perfection, a totally unique viewing experience from frame to frame. It also happens to be one of the most depressing things you'll ever sit through, so fair warning. The story unfolds in Glasgow, where some strange pandemic is causing people, all over the world, to slowly lose there sensory perception, one at a time and preceded by cursory symptoms like rage, hunger, grief or the like. Sounds like a neat setup for a streamlined post apocalyptic thriller right?Not so much. Mackenzie is fascinated more by things like intimacy, pacing, thoughtful musical accents, haunting narration and how these underplayed qualities are influenced by the extreme nature of the theme. It's also a fiercely passionate love story, but one that gets gradually bleaker, as each instrument in our bodies we use to show love for one another slowly dims and darkens, a harrowing thing to witness once we're invested. A research scientist (Eva Green) and a chef (Ewan McGregor) meet, fall in love and are then faced with the dire adversity of the world's situation. First everyone's sense of smell disappears. Then taste. Hearing soon after. And so it goes. Their romance is already a tangled bramble bush thanks to both their collective issues, and once the epidemic enters the picture, things aren't easy to deal with and don't go well. McGregor's sunny disposition contrasts the overcast,dismal palette of the film, whilst Green and her seemingly never depleted stores of intensity are in full forecast, the two making an electric pair onscreen. I love how a story that's so rooted in sci-fi and thriller elsewhere gets the quiet, contemplative romantic focus here, it's a welcome change. This isn't Hollywood territory though, and the epidemic is treated in the gravest way, without salvation via deus ex machina in sight, and I'll warn you that the final scene will land with an anvil blow to your ol' soul, it's that bleak and disheartening. Couldn't recommend it enough though, it's a dose of pure brilliance on every perceivable level.

The log-line of "Perfect Sense" (directed by David Mackenzie) makes the movie sound gimmicky at best. "A chef and a scientist fall in love as an epidemic begins to rob people of their sensory perceptions"? Aside from imminent sentimentality, this description signalled to me the inevitable deployment of a cheap trick. Yet with Eva Green and Ewan McGregor leading the cast, I thought, give me a taste of the maudlin gimmick.Susan (Green) is an epidemiologist working on this sense-subtracting disease that begins with a few cases and ends up a pandemic. Michael (McGregor) is a talented chef at a high-end restaurant that shares an alley with Susan's apartment. Both characters are self-admitted assholes who fall in unlikely love while this affliction deconstructs their very personhood (along with everyone else's on the planet). I don't need to tell you to balk at my description if I've made the movie sound less watchable than the log-line has. Yet I will say that you'll be missing out if, based on any blurb, you dismiss this movie entirely. "Perfect sense" is a gem that increases in value the longer you look at it. "And what are we really?" it seems to ask. "A number of perceptual senses linked to a narrow spectrum of underlying emotions?" That's one suggestion it communicates before adding: "You've gotta love that." Prior to losing each sense, victims of this disease experience an uncontrollable surge of emotion: despair before losing smell, ravenousness before taste, rage before hearing, and, ushering in the loss of sight, all-encompassing love and hope. Darkness at last consumes all victims while blindly and silently they cling to loved ones whom they can also neither smell nor taste. Left with only the ability to feel the person beside them, all await the final subtraction (touch) that can only render them lifeless. Two of the many interesting things about this apocalyptic movie are the disease that sense-by-sense disassembles people, and the adaptive measures people take in order to cope with their ensuing condition. Those who can no longer taste begin to describe food in terms of texture, consistency or with onomatopoeia while artists attempt to reintroduce or at least remember flavor through music. So in a sense, synesthesia becomes a short-term savior. Though the movie provides much food for thought, at heart it's a love story between Susan and Michael. Remember that. Whether or not their love burgeons as a result of the apocalypse doesn't matter. We don't know what causes the disease. Is it environmental? Manmade? Gaia? Aliens? We never find out, so in that respect there's no didacticism. Neither are we subjected to some cornball yarn about love transcending space and time. The more existential and less literal question we're left with as a result is: Really, though, what else of any significance is there? I'm reminded of "Poem" by Al Purdy, particularly its last line: "there is nothing at all I can do except hold your hand and not go away." The sense of helplessness Purdy conveys when the narrator tries to console an ill loved one, a time when nothing can be done for someone other than to provide a loving presence, is nothing if not touching to the reader because of its understated, pragmatic truth: love, whatever magic it isn't, sustains us. It's sustenance. In the same vein, "Perfect Sense" isn't saying that love intensifies as the disease progresses. It isn't claiming that with all distractions removed love can be seen for what it is, all-important. Thanks for sparing us those sentiments by the way. Something of what the movie does say is that love, nurturing, care, warmth, whatever you want to call it, as we slowly fall apart, is the one thing we can still manage to express with each, however limited, piece of ourselves we have left—and right up until removal of our last sense snuffs us out. Potentially, perhaps coincidentally, yet for certain thankfully, love also happens to be all we need in perilous times like these. And if that's gimmicky then so are we.

Love in a time of sensory deprivation...A strange disease has afflicted the earth, depriving people of their sense of smell and taste, initially, then spreading further. At this time a chef, Michael (played by Ewan McGregor), and a scientist, Susan (played by Eva Green), start a relationship...Overly schmaltzy and a bit dull. While the movie does make some interesting points about the importance of our senses, and maybe lack of importance in terms of relationships, the main theme is purely a basic love story, and I believe that's been done before...Good performances by Ewan McGregor and Eva Green in the lead roles. Some solid support, though Ewen Bremner is irritating.

Reading the description of this movie, I felt like it would be a boring traditional end of the world romance. But instead it shows us life, true emotion and human fear. It represents what the average person would do in this situation (which is very carefully and skilfully thought out), without having the nonsense that these average people can somehow unrealistically save the world. Its amazing, the camera work, the plot, the actors and their rolls are made for each other. Their emotions transfer onto us, we feel the struggle of this time as if we could be next. And the message that any one could take away from this film is inspiring and hopeful, but to receive this message you have to watch closely, which isn't hard considering you are already glued to the screen every second of the way. This is one of the best films I have ever watched, and by far the best plot of any film I have watched. For anyone mature enough to sit and experience this film, it is amazing.