Perfect Sense movie video clip

Perfect Sense is a movie that I imagine will be rather polarizing, with most people loving it or hating it, and only a smaller number falling somewhere in the like/don’t-like spectrum. And those reactions will depend, in large part, on what folks are expecting and looking for from the flick. In Perfect Sense, there’s a possible global pandemic which may just be the End Times. It begins with people being hit with an intense emotional sadness, balling over into crying lumps, and when they dry their eyes, they no longer have their sense of smell. Further emotion/sense symptoms follow from there. Some people will already be out with this emotional aspect — they’ll find it silly. And it is a little silly. Others will be pissed that questions about this pandemic go unanswered. How did it start? How did it spread? How does it work? Is there an immunity or a cure. Not the point.

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Perfect Sense movie cast and crew

Directed by

David Mackenzie



Eva Green

Lauren Tempany

Ewan McGregor

Connie Nielsen

Denis Lawson

Stephen Dillane

Shabana Akhtar Bakhsh

Caroline Paterson

Malcolm Shields

Judith Anne Christie

Ewen Bremner

Richard Mack

Alastair Mackenzie

Perfect Sense movie overview

Perfect Sense is a movie that I imagine will be rather polarizing, with most people loving it or hating it, and only a smaller number falling somewhere in the like/don’t-like spectrum. And those reactions will depend, in large part, on what folks are expecting and looking for from the flick. In Perfect Sense, there’s a possible global pandemic which may just be the End Times. It begins with people being hit with an intense emotional sadness, balling over into crying lumps, and when they dry their eyes, they no longer have their sense of smell. Further emotion/sense symptoms follow from there. Some people will already be out with this emotional aspect — they’ll find it silly. And it is a little silly. Others will be pissed that questions about this pandemic go unanswered. How did it start? How did it spread? How does it work? Is there an immunity or a cure. Not the point.

The film is really about a poetic romance, with these possible End Times and humanity’s capability to adapt and survive serving as a background. If you understand this going in, you’re far more likely to enjoy the film, if you’re into relationship movies. Susan (Eva Green) is an epidemiologist in Glasgow studying this thing that’s going on in the world, and she’s also getting over a recent heartbreak. Mike (Ewan McGregor) is a chef at a restaurant near Susan’s flat, and he’s a cad with no apparent intent to get into a serious relationship. But they end up sharing an intense emotional night as a result of this pandemic, and an eventual relationship slowly blossoms.

And that’s the film, tracking both Susan and Mike’s relationship and, to a lesser extent, the global effect of this pandemic that is stripping people of their senses (paired with additional emotional outbursts). As people lose their senses, they largely adapt, cope and carry on with their lives, and we particularly see this through Mike. How does a chef and his restaurant adapt and cook for people who can’t smell or, worse yet, have no sense of taste? There are periodic voiceover monologues which provide further exposition about the pandemic and its emotional and sense-stripping symptoms, and showing the global-wide effects. Some of the language is a bit flowery but, overall, these bits worked well for me.

Again, I realize the emotional aspect of this pandemic is silly when written out, and sometimes a little silly on the screen as well. But overall, it tees up some important and strong beats in Susan and Mike’s growing relationship, and it really allows McGregor and Green to do a lot with their roles. (And yes, both of them show their naughty bits, which comes as no surprise as we’ve known for a long time that McGregor and Green are comfortable with on-screen nudity). The rest of the cast is solid, though given a lot less to work with, and Ewan Bremner (playing a friend and colleague of Mike’s) gets a special hat-tip.

The movie is beautifully shot, aside from a few handheld shots that felt out of place, and carries a continuing and growing sense of dread and eventual heartbreak, even while showing the growth of this relationship between Mike and Susan. It actually shares certain similarities with another Sundance premier, Another Earth, though I think it hits its notes a little better, and can also be considered a kin to the superior City of Men. Perfect Sense is neither a fun nor comfortable movie to watch, nor is it a perfect movie, but it is a very good, emotional film that I am likely to revisit.

Perfect Sense movie review

David Mackenzie's Perfect Sense is an end-of-the-world romance in which the world disappears incrementally. Being involved in this velvet apocalypse is a little like being the Cheshire cat, unable to control which part of you will disappear next.Like Steven Soderbergh's Contagion and Fernando Meirelles' Blindness, Mackenzie's cataclysm comes in the form of an unexplained epidemic. But Mackenzie's view of this event tends to be more microcosmic. Though he shows bits of each stage of the mysterious illness in other parts of the world, his focus primarily is on two people in Edinburgh, Scotland: a chef named Michael (Ewan McGregor) and an epidemiologist named Susan (Eva Green).

They meet because her apartment windows overlook the alley onto which the back door of Michael's restaurant opens. He brazenly tries to pick her up and, when it works, he finds himself attracted by her slightly cold and impersonal approach to sex -- not unlike his own.

Even as they are getting to know each other, the pandemic breaks out. The first manifestation? People inexplicably are thrown into a state of profound grief, weeping uncontrollably -- and when that passes (in about 15 minutes), they discover they've lost their sense of smell.

Eventually, doctors figure out that nothing seems to stop this illness and that no one is immune, no matter what precautions are taken: germ masks, quarantines and so on. Not long afterward it strikes again: People are overcome with ravenous hunger, eating every foodstuff in sight in gluttonous amounts, again for about 15 minutes. When they emerge from this eating delirium, they find that they've lost their sense of taste.

It moves through the other senses -- but not before Mackenzie and writer Kim Aakeson have time to explore the impact of the loss of each individual sense. The loss of taste buds, for example, would seem to be the death knell for restaurants but, as Michael discovers, people still want to eat out -- except, instead of flavor, they now crave different textures and temperatures, since they can't taste anything.

It's an intriguing premise, which Aakeson builds to a moment of romantic tension, as Michael and Susan split up after the next wave of the malady: a bout of uncontrollable, destructive rage that pitches the world into chaos -- followed by the loss of hearing. Will Michael and Susan get past the horrible things they say to each other while in the throes of illness-induced anger to find their way back to each other before the next sense (there are only two left at this point) disappears?

But the problem with Mackenzie's film is that, by this time, you've lost interest. The gimmick isn't enough to sustain drama because it doesn't provide any jeopardy. And these two central characters are such cool customers that they seldom generate any heat. They're too busy fortifying their own emotional shells against any intrusion.

As a result, the sex is never particularly sexy and there is no romance to play against the surrounding events. Even as humanity is slowly stripped of its senses, nothing seems to be particularly at stake. There's no one to root for; you keep watching Perfect Sense out of a sense of curiosity -- and dwindling curiosity, at that.