STUDIO: MPI (BUY IT FROM CHUD.COM)
MSRP: $29.99
RATED: R
RUNNING TIME: 92 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Featurette
- Trailer
- Disc is round and shiny
THE TEAM: David Mackenzie (director). Ewan McGregor. Eva Green. Ewan Bremner. Stephen Dillaine. Connie Nielsen. Denis Lawson. (stars). Kim Fupz Aakeson (writer).
THE PITCH: The world is changing and our senses are abandoning us as a race. Is it the end of the world? Who knows, what is focal is two people find in each other a true love. If they can fight through the chaos of the world.
THE REVIEW:
This is just about a classic movie.
It’s beautiful, thought-provoking, excellently made and acted, and uncompromising in its approach. It also features monkeys.
Ah, the old “shared eye” trick.
Without pointing a finger at any one bit of tampering humans are doing to themselves on the chemical, molecular, and metaphysical level Perfect Sense showcases an Armageddon possibly even scarier than the mass destruction we’re used to seeing onscreen. One by one, mankind’s senses fade away. Rather than mine the hysteria for cheap thrills the film dwells in subtleties, something which comes organically as the two lead characters work in business directly affected by the development.
They could no longer mask their love for one another.
Eva Green’s Susan is a scientist trying to understand and stop the epidemic and were this an American film there’d be a breathless race against time and all of the narrative energy would be spent towards finding a cure. Instead, this film focuses on acceptance. About sensation. Emotionally cold, she finds warmth in McGregor’s chef. As he deals with the profound ramifications of taste dying in his career, a subplot that is handled with freshness and creativity, he finds in her a woman he can sleep with and devote himself to. Under the exaggerated tempo of the changing world these two open up and find the thing that seemingly has eluded them all their lives.
Where the film really excels is in its dread and oblique look at a world in flux. How humans adapt to no taste. No smell. Seeing how the populace toughens up and how some go mad. It’s old school literary sci-fi when really clicking. Mackenzie has a lot of fun marrying art house sensibilities to small scale terror and its filmmakers who exist in the margins who really know how to take very familiar genre tropes and freshen them.
Behold the fallout from Ewan’s tattooed Pillow Book dick!
Additionally there’s the presence of two very brave and unflinching performers as the leads. There’s an abundance of sexual content and both stars have plenty of nudity under their belts in their careers. There’s nothing exploitative here, just frankness and tenderness. Watching these two top echelon talents in what is essentially a boutique genre film is fantastic stuff and Perfect Sense is as close to a pure sleeper as there is.
It’s intimate, deep-thinking, and immaculately made. See it.
It wasn’t the best violin cover of ‘Seasons in the Abyss’ but it sufficed.
ITS PLACE IN THE PANTHEON:
A sneaky little classic. If you appreciate things like Children of Men, Never Let Me Go, and The Trigger Effect you should love this.
Ewan’s penis-mount worked perfectly with the new Canon.
There are virtually no special feaures.
Rating: 
Out of a Possible 5 Stars
The all Lesbian ‘Waterworld’ had potential.