|
Perfect Sense
| Released |
7 October 2011 |
| Director |
David Mackenzie |
Starring
|
Ewan McGregor, Eva Green, Ewen Bremner, Stephen Dillane, Denis Lawson, Anamaria Marinca, Alastair Mackenzie, Connie Nielson |
| Writer(s) |
Kim Fupz Aakeson |
| Producer(s) |
Gillian Berrie, Malte Grunert |
Origin
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Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark |
| Running Time |
92 minutes |
| Genre |
Drama, romance |
| Rating |
15A |
|
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An attack on the Senses.
Ewan McGregor has been quite busy in American films of late such as The Men Who Stare at Goats, I Love You Philip Morris and Beginners. So presumably he was happy to dump his (sometimes wonky) American accent and use his normal voice in this film set in Glasgow. He’s reunited with David Mackenzie, who directed him in Young Adam, another film set in Scotland. To increase the home movie feel, he has in the supporting cast his uncle, Denis Lawson and his old mucker from Trainspotting, Ewen Bremner.
He plays Michael, a chef in a fancy Glasgow restaurant (apparently such a thing does exist). Eva Green, a French actress who has mostly worked in English-speaking films, plays Susan, a scientist who specialises in infectious diseases. Michael and Susan are two emotionally damaged people. Both are haunted by regrets and mistakes made in past relationships. However after a one-night stand, they start dating each other with cautious optimism.
Their timing is lousy though. Shortly after they meet, Susan’s boss (Stephen Dillane) brings her back into work. There’s been a strange incident with a truck driver who broke down in tears overcome by grief and then recovered, only to lose his sense of smell. It’s a bizarre event, but it turns out similar cases are happening all over Scotland and indeed the world. The authorities recognise the epidemic, but are powerless to stop it. Soon it happens to everyone, including Susan and Michael, and people are forced to live in a world without smell. However this is just a beginning and soon other senses are under attack as society threatens to break down.
This is a fascinating little film. Global pandemics regularly crop up in contemporary films (Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion will arrive soon) but they generally focus on things on a macro level. We get scenes of mass panic and what the American president will do to solve it. Perfect Sense makes a strength of its biggest weakness, its small budget, to keep the focus on a local level. Sure there’s a few brief shots of how events are affecting people in Africa and Asia, but all the main action takes place within a small area of Glasgow. Green’s sombre voiceover leads us through events as they happen and this increases the tone of melancholy.
The main focus is on how people are adaptable and resolute in dealing with all that is thrown at them and this part of the film works very well and is surprisingly uplifting. The other part, the love story between Susan and Michael, doesn’t work quite so well as you never really get the sense that there’s much chemistry between Green and McGregor.
Overall though, this is an intriguingly low-key take on the classic “disaster film” and is well worth checking out.
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Jim O’Connor |
