Perfect Sense Review

Kieran's Rating: 7/10 Player Affinity Composite Rating: 7.3/10 (2 reviews total) How you react to something completely unimaginable happening? Would you break down, become nihilistic, carry on as normal or believe in the strength of the human spirit? Perfect Sense aims to answer that question. Across the world a disease is spreading where people suffer an onslaught of grief and lose their sense of smell. In the middle of this unusual pandemic is Susan (Eva Green), a scientist researching it to find a cure and Michael (Ewan McGregor), a chef in Glasgow who cannot cook effectively without his sense of smell. Both of them have their own baggage and they start to fall in love, all while humanity begins losing more senses—the characteristics that make us human. Perfect Sense is a terrifically acted movie and has a wonderful, haunting score. Green and McGregor have a natural chemistry together and made you believe their personal issues. Michael is an optimist who believes humanity will adapt to the new environment while Susan continues to fight her demons. It is easily one of the best performances of McGregor's career. Perfect Sense is a love story set in the foreground of the end of the world, but it is also about humanity’s need to seek an equilibrium, to develop a new balance when something has changed. Humanity looks for new ways to continue, new joys, senses and even vices. Some people would give up life and just run amok, but most want to carry on with their lives and adapt to changing circumstances. There is a simple but clever idea behind Perfect Sense: how would we react to the loss of something we all take for granted? How does losing our senses make us husks of what we use to be and how are they linked to our memories and personalities? Perfect Sense is a story of how love could still exist and blossom in such a world, a dying world for that matter. We see what happens through both Michael and Susan and the wider world (though fleetingly) through narration and stock footage. On the other hand, David Mackenzie's direction is too cold and clinical, forcing a distance between the characters and the audience. The pacing is a little too slow at times, remarkable considering the short running time. The relationship also lacks the natural, organic flow that it deserved. But there are moments of artistic flair when deafness hits and all that can be heard is an unpleasant ringing sound—the world did feel like it had descended into silence. Perfect Sense is certainly worthy viewing, but because of its more intimate tone and approach, it is more fitting for the small screen. John thought: "Another year, another apocalypse movie. In Perfect Sense, however, the end of the world comes with a delicious twist. It's not another planet coming to destroy us (a la Melancholia), nor is it necessarily a Contagion-like epidemic. Rather, it's the sudden and inexplicable loss of our senses. Mackenzie utilizes an approach that just killed Another Earth, another similarly-themed film, by focusing on the personal baggage of a pair of flawed individuals. But Mackenzie smartly never loses focus of his film's most interesting material, and as a result, it's easy to forgive the film's few flaws." Rating: 7.5/10