Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a reader review for a Sundance flick I won't be able to catch until tonight (Tuesday). The film is Perfect Sense and it stars to very pretty people: Eva Green and Ewan McGregor! Here's ColinSL with more!
Hey there, Quint. You guys used a couple reviews I sent a few years back for Big Fan and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Tonight I was fortunate enough to catch the premiere of Perfect Sense which was directed by David Mackenzie and stars Ewan McGregor and Eva Green. The film provides a very different take on the "apocalyptic disease outbreak" genre by showing what would happen if all the humans of the world slowly started losing each of their five senses.
The movie opens with a very pretty narrative voiceover from Eva Green's character (Susan) about life, essentially, as we know it worldwide, addressing everything from darkness and light to work and relationships. We then follow Susan, an epidemiologist, encountering an unusual patient, a truck driver who had a sudden crying fit and is now without the ability to smell. There begin to be many other cases with extremely similar symptoms.
Around this same time, she meets Michael (Ewan McGregor), a chef that works near her apartment, and as this "sickness" sweeps the world, the two of them fall in love after sharing the same experience of a sudden, uncontrollable sobbing fit followed by the loss of sense of smell. The two of them become infatutuated with each other set to the backdrop of the world changing and learning to live in new and different ways, innovating how they enjoy themselves and each other.
There are so many incredible things going on in this film that it would be a crime to discuss each of them specifically without letting the viewer experience it for themselves. "Perfect Sense," with great shrewdness and restraint, shows us how much we take for granted, the resilience of humans and just how sweeping a sensation it is to truly love somebody. The original score is both despairing and optimistic without ever drawing too much attention to itself and always complimenting the scene that it's accompanying. David Mackenzie's direction is powerful and visceral, diving into the psyche to help the viewer imagine their own life without the senses we all take for granted.
I think that every single person in the world should watch this film as it explores just how exactly our senses define us, what they mean to us and what it would be like to live without them. You will gain a new gratitude for life upon exiting the theatre (providing, hopefully, that it gets picked up for distribution) and the film's final five minutes will leave you shaking for minutes afterward, wiping the tears from your eyes.
If you use this, I'm ColinSL. Happy Sundance!
-ColinSL
colinsays.com
