Perfect Sense
I went to the cinema this afternoon, for the first time in ages, to see Perfect Sense. It's one of those movies where you get the feeling that it wasn't really released - it just escaped. It stars Ewan McGregor, who was on Jonathan Ross's show last week to promote it, but it played just one week, in one cinema, in Sheffield.
I don't think the trailer sold it very well, though it was quite true to the movie. I like Ewan McGregor, and was quite happy to watch him get his kit off, yet again. One of the supporting actors was his uncle, Denis Lawson, whom I will watch in almost anything. He's also happy to abandon his clothes for the sake of his art, which is no great strain to look at, either,
Perfect Sense is set in Glasgow, which had me trying to see if I recognized any locations. Ewan plays a chef, in a restaurant owned by Denis. The female lead is played by Eva Green, and she's an epidemiologist. Both have been damaged by previous relationships and find it difficult to trust. As they get to know one another, a new virus begins to affect people world-wide. A bout of deep grief is followed by the loss of the sense of smell. Eva and her fellow scientists can't work out the nature of the illness, or how it's transmitted.
The film isn't about explaining, or controlling the disease. It's about how people adapt and carry on. After smell, people begin to loose their sense of taste. Denis's character is convinced this will be the end for his restaurant but it isn't. People adapt. They still want the experience of going out together, and being waited on. The chefs create new menus with the emphasis on colour and texture. The loss of two senses, with still no explanation for the plague, makes people more aware of the remaining senses. The (not very explicit) sex scenes are about revelling in touch and sensation. Society struggles to cope, yet people somehow keep trying to put their world back in order and carry on, even when deafness overtakes the world.
Although it's an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it film, it manages to be hopeful as well as sad. We get glimpses, mostly as newsreel footage, of the rest of the world being affected, but the overall perspective of the gradually approaching catastrophe is from the experiences of a few people, in one city. It's a very thoughtful film, that you probably need to be in the right mood for, but it's worth the effort.
I don't think the trailer sold it very well, though it was quite true to the movie. I like Ewan McGregor, and was quite happy to watch him get his kit off, yet again. One of the supporting actors was his uncle, Denis Lawson, whom I will watch in almost anything. He's also happy to abandon his clothes for the sake of his art, which is no great strain to look at, either,
Perfect Sense is set in Glasgow, which had me trying to see if I recognized any locations. Ewan plays a chef, in a restaurant owned by Denis. The female lead is played by Eva Green, and she's an epidemiologist. Both have been damaged by previous relationships and find it difficult to trust. As they get to know one another, a new virus begins to affect people world-wide. A bout of deep grief is followed by the loss of the sense of smell. Eva and her fellow scientists can't work out the nature of the illness, or how it's transmitted.
The film isn't about explaining, or controlling the disease. It's about how people adapt and carry on. After smell, people begin to loose their sense of taste. Denis's character is convinced this will be the end for his restaurant but it isn't. People adapt. They still want the experience of going out together, and being waited on. The chefs create new menus with the emphasis on colour and texture. The loss of two senses, with still no explanation for the plague, makes people more aware of the remaining senses. The (not very explicit) sex scenes are about revelling in touch and sensation. Society struggles to cope, yet people somehow keep trying to put their world back in order and carry on, even when deafness overtakes the world.
Although it's an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it film, it manages to be hopeful as well as sad. We get glimpses, mostly as newsreel footage, of the rest of the world being affected, but the overall perspective of the gradually approaching catastrophe is from the experiences of a few people, in one city. It's a very thoughtful film, that you probably need to be in the right mood for, but it's worth the effort.