Perfect Sense Review

Perfect Sense spent very little time in the cinema upon its release last year and I was very sorry to miss it. I was therefore glad to receive a test disc to review for its DVD release and pleased to report that it was well worth the wait. Set in present day Glasgow, the film introduces us to Susan (Green) and Michael (McGregor), a scientist and a chef. They meet, get together and fall in love against the backdrop of a global epidemic. An unknown disease afflicts the entire human race, which, over a fairly long period of time, robs people of their senses one by one.

First to go is smell, which the world’s population largely takes in their stride. Taste is next, which proves more troublesome. By the time hearing makes its exit, society is starts skating on thin ice. Superficially, you might compare this to Steven Soderbergh’sContagion, which released around about the same time. Whilst that film was interested in how organisations and governments reacted in the face of a crisis, Perfect Sense is much more interested in the response of everyday folk and their relationships. It is also, for my money, the better film.

Green and McGregor perform well and convince as a loving, modern couple – we see their relationship and devotion to each other develop, but we also see their complexities, desires and regrets as individuals too. Director David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Hallam Foe) tells the story well and, as you might expect, reflects the sensory deprivation of his protagonists on his audience. From a slightly geeky point of view, he also does some interesting things with locked off and roving cameras.

The emotional highpoint of the film is its ending, in which there is a moment of wonderful yet quiet catharsis, which is conveyed better than most such attempts in recent memory and manages to deliver a sense of both great joy and heartbreak in a truly stunning scene.

Some may criticise the film’s occasional penchant for the whimsical and there is one moment where the character’s actions don’t quite ring true, but that’s about the worst I can say about it.Perfect Sense was an engaging, inventive (the subplot regarding how Michael’s restaurant diversifies its menu in the face of the epidemic was very well done) and at its best, very affecting. Go buy it now. You know it makes sense.