Green And McGregor Make Perfect Sense
As modern society is surrounded by communicative technologies that enable humans to interact with others thousands of miles round the earth instantaneously, Perfect Sense reminds us that we have people immediately around us who sometimes are overlooked and neglected. The internet, wireless devices, mobile phones, computers, and satellite televisions make Obama's Whitehouse speech present in any English home and provide opportunity to see arctic animals in detail from a sofa. They make the capitalistic transnational corporations able to secure multi-million pound deals from China to Los Angeles, and they make the people around us unappreciated, less exciting. When touch is the only sense Susan (Eva Green) and Michael (Ewan McGregor) are left with as a disease spreads across humans causing chaotic lifestyle, all of this changes.
Every character undergoes a process before they lose a preparatory sense, keeping the audience interested throughout the predictable narrative. Before a sense is lost, a schizophrenic outburst allows the cast to get emotional, angry, overjoyed and obscene. This “disease” is worldwide (as told by montages throughout), Africans scramble greedily over food and water to cure their hunger outburst before taste is lost, tears stream down faces unexplainably, Michael rants at Susan inexcusably. These turbulent sequences provide numerous examples of revolutionary cinematography and sound design, whilst the calm after the storm gives time for an empathetic interpolated audience to watch how humans adapt to tastelessness, deafness and blindness.
As the scent is lost from nasal passages, Michael – head chef at a fine restaurant, focuses his recipes purely by taste, allowing him to use up whatever old stuff they have around the kitchen as customers can’t smell the food. And when taste goes, food becomes more about the texture and presentation rather than the ingredients and quality. Life goes on, people adapt and adjust. The communicative senses are still working hence there is order, but when these fail the streets are filled with crashed cars, smashed windows, and looters from the London riots, and it becomes overwhelmingly problematic to gain, understand and express information.
Don't mistake this for a out and out sci-fi film though; it’s predominantly a romance. Susan's relationship history allows her to adopt the “all men are arseholes" attitude, whilst Michael's colleagues present him as a ladies man, a natural smooth talker. At first Michael is an arsehole, he asks Susan to leave after sleeping with her, and from this point onwards we wait for him to pull a stunt sending Susan back down to square one; but he doesn't. The duo fall for each other through numerous rendezvous and hopeful glares between Susan’s second floor window and Michaels kitchen backdoor - McKenzie's clearly a Romeo and Juliet fan.
The performances are good. Eva Green's facial expressions express the bleakness of her surroundings and inner emotion on several occasions whilst Ewan McGregor's lives up to his back catalogue. After The Dreamers (Green) and Trainspotting (McGregor) it was no surprise that this duo demonstrated their love in titillating fashion. The support cast is filled with numerous recognisable faces from film and television; Connie Nielson (Gladiator), Ewen Bremner (Snatch) and Dennis Lawson to name a few, who all uphold the films quality.
All in all, a film that is definitely worthwhile seeing just to refresh appreciation for the finer things in life.
4 Stars
Tom Ross
tomross49@btinternet.com