Perfect Sense

" Perfect Sense"

"As Reported by Dollyforme"

Eva Green is simply yummy – very busty but with a look of intelligence to her. She is best known as a Bond Girl, she branches out into British Science Fiction with this interesting tale released in Theatres in Britian and Redbox for the rest of the world.

In this movie, a mysterious disease strips the movie’s lovers Eva Green and Ewan McGregor of their humanity one sense at a time. It’s a rich contrast – the heightened emotions of falling for someone paralleled with sudden jarring losses of feeling – particularly as McGregor is a chef. “Without smell, an ocean of past images disappears,” intones the anonymous narrator.

Soon, McGregor begins serving noisy, brightly coloured food to compensate. Later, when taste disappears too, we see him and Green naked in the bath chugging shaving cream for kicks.

The message is stark: to be human is to adapt. Or, perhaps – as kids cry in sweet shops, grown men chew raw meat and martial law is declared – to be human is to always want more. It’s a film thick with melancholy. From the desolate docks to its lonely back streets, Glasgow has never felt so austere. But there’s hope here too. McGregor and Green’s hearts may be broken but their bodies are alive; the chemistry they fire up offers the frisson of visceral, believable human connection.

With neither explanation or cure for the phenomenon forthcoming, a state of pandemonium erupts worldwide and the film becomes both terrifying and strangely beautiful. Exploring the human side of science-fiction, Perfect Sense poses the question: would we rebel and ransack the world or find a collective solace in our loss?

As the film’s stoical mantra insists, life goes on, but that doesn’t stop director David Mackenzie from fashioning the kind of apocalyptic thrills more akin to zombie films. Granted, a severe olfactory pandemic is about as likely as zombies rising from the grave, but handled with this subtle sense of realism, it suddenly seems panickingly plausible.

The film constantly appeals to the audience’s visceral sense of perception, too: some shots look so raw you can almost smell them; others are deafeningly silent. Best of all, it plays on the common sense – forcing the audience to question whether, in a crisis, we would adapt and evolve or simply revert to a feral-like existence.

In fact, Perfect Sense threatens to be one of those rare instances where the idea is actually more intriguing than the film itself. But as Michael and Susan lose their senses – and possibly each other – the myopic world of Perfect Sense becomes increasingly sensual and thrilling.

True, some will find Perfect Sense pretentious – laughable, even. But even at its most unlikely, you’ll root for the duo to go the distance. This movie is a moving look at what it means to be human in the most extreme circumstances, this is kitchen-sink sci-fi with an aching soul.