Jeremy Podeswa - Page Two
The Five Senses
Podewsa's The Five Senses is a carefully crafted drama pivoting
around the five senses - touch, taste, hearing, smell and vision - and the lives
of five characters, each searching for a significant and intimate human connection.
The story takes place over an intense three-day period in which a child has
disappeared, galvanizing the public and media's attention.
Against
this dramatic backdrop, five people are engaged in their own personal crisis.
Each character represents a separate sense. Podeswa subtly unifies these characters
by beginning their names with the letter R. Richard, a lonely French eye doctor,
is going deaf and is attempting to build a library of sounds before his hearing
is lost. Ruth is a widowed massage therapist who must regain the ability to
truly touch; her teenaged daughter, Rachel, is learning, in her own voyeuristic
way, how to see the world. Rona is an independent woman who makes beautiful
cakes that taste awful, while her best friend, Robert, is an uptight house cleaner
with a highly attuned sense of smell. As the story of the missing girl is resolved,
so are the stories of these five characters.
The film possesses an overall quality of sadness, but there is also a message of hope. In many ways, The Five Senses is also a love story. Throughout the film, which is rated R, there is a powerful sexual undercurrent.
"You want emotional intimacy and you want physical intimacy," Podeswa says, in a interview with The National Post. " And, especially when you're dealing with a film about the senses, people need that kind of connectedness."
The Five Senses was shot on location in Toronto, Canada, traversing the city and shooting in some 25 different locations in as many days. Throughout, writer-director Jeremy Podeswa found himself facing the unique challenges of trying to forge an "intimate epic" out of several delicately intertwined stories. "It felt like making five movies in one feature film," comments Podeswa. "Actors were always coming in and out. The challenge for me was to maintain the constant sense that every story is moving through the same believable world."
The Five Senses, distributed by Fine Lines Features, was released in New York and Los Angeles on July 14 and will soon be released in limited cities across the country.
Related Links
- The Five Senses Official Site
- Enter the Sweepstakes
- A Trailer of the Film
- Podeswa's Interview with IndieWIRE
- Podeswa talks to The National Post
pictures courtesy of Fine Line Features
