Perfect Sense

Oh no. The world, it is coming to an end in David McKenzie’s dystopian love story Perfect Sense.

First, you experience an inexplicable burst of grief, and then, immediately after, a loss of smell. Live with that for a while. Then, a burst of hunger takes over that population that has humans eating flowers and live bunny rabbits, raw fish and lipstick and guzzling down cartons of mustard. After the eating binge, the sense of taste goes. Don’t worry, though: humans can adapt. There is still touch and and texture -- there are pleasures to be had. It’s all okay for awhile. The riots that started in the street stop -- for awhile. Equanimity is regained. Until the hearing goes.

Perfect Sense asks a lot from the audience. First, to accept the premise -- the one-by-one loss of the senses for no explainable reason -- and suspend your disbelief. Then, sink into your seats because really, what you are watching is a love story. A big messy romance. I was able to do this.

Because, oh, the lovers. French actress Eva Green stars as Susan, a very serious epidemiologist, who frequently bemoans her lonely state of being to her sister. She is, by the way, a terrible scientist, and does not make a single discovery during the course of the film, but she is something to look at. Stunning.

Ewan McGregor plays Michael, a top chef at a top restaurant, with lots of tattoos covering his torso, who kicks gorgeous women out of his bed after he is done with them, because he can't sleep unless he's alone. From the moment Susan and Michael meet, their destiny -- together -- seems clear.

Fine by me. Honestly. Eva Green is not in enough movies. She burst out in Bernardo's Bertolucci's The Dreamers and has not been in enough since. The intensity of her performance might be attributed to her bone structure, but it is fantastic. McGregor makes for a terrific romantic lead. He gave a lovely performance in last year's Beginners, in a love affair with both his dying father and a reluctant movie star. He is just as desirable in Perfect Sense.

Chances are these tormented lovers would not stand a chance in ordinary circumstances, getting in their own way of happiness. But because the world is coming to an end, they seem to decide, sensibly enough, to cling to one another. They make love, frequently. They go out dancing. Even after losing their sense of taste, they drink and they drink. Pleasure is paramount. In one scene, before making love in the bath tub, momentarily shaken when a serious moment comes upon them, they eat soap -- remember their sense of taste is gone -- and then, they laugh and they laugh. They look good together, naked, in a bath tub.

Unlike Steven Sodebergh’s recent Contagion where scientists seek a cure for the crisis and develop a vaccine, this film proposes no answers. The rioting in the street seems cliched. The necessity of keeping an haute restaurant seemed slightly preposterous and almost offensive -- perhaps just to a class of audience that never dines in such fancy restaurants. But, again, these lovers. While watching the film, I never once felt compassion for the rest of the dying masses, struggling with their own demise. I never feared -- as I did with Soderbergh’s Contagion -- that such an epidemic could strike, make me reluctant to leave my home because of malingering germs. The end of the world, instead, was a device to bring them together -- and strangely enough, a successful one.