The Five Senses

In movies, as in most other art forms, the greatest of works often come in the smallest of packages. Such is the case with `The Five Senses,' an independent Canadian production that chooses for its subject nothing less profound than a meditation on what it means to be human. Writer/director Jeremy Podeswa has fashioned a work of great poetic form and insight centered around a group of people who share the universal need to find true love and acceptance in a world where wounded and shattered relationships all too often result in magnified loneliness and despair. Like all of us, each of these characters gropes towards the dual goals of intimacy with others and acceptance of oneself that are essential for human happiness. Some succeed, while others fail – just as in life – but none of the characters is left unchanged by the experience.

`The Five Senses,' though it has a plot, is more of an emotional mood piece than a narrative-driven drama. Blessed with an outstanding ensemble cast, Podeswa is able to draw us in to the center of his world through the use of sensory imagery and deliberate, methodical pacing. In fact, one of the strongest themes running through the film is its examination of the part our senses play in defining our world and character. Podeswa understands that we have become desensitized to our senses. As a result, he uses this film to reconnect us to that crucial element of our beings. The quiet, hushed tone, the muted autumnal colors, the slowly moving camera, the haunting musical score all combine to create an atmosphere in which the audience can become conscious of every sight and sound that comes our way.

In our effort to establish meaningful intimacy with other human beings, we most typically rely on the sense of touch – yet, this can serve, Podeswa shows us, as much to trap us into a false intimacy as to lead us into one that is genuine and lasting. A number of his characters use sex as a substitute for true closeness, while others make a physical connection on a much deeper level. One of the most moving moments in the film occurs when a gay man – most probably an AIDS patient – breaks down in tears during a massage session, his heart broken because no one has dared to touch him in so long a time. This film acknowledges the vital part that tender physical contact plays in the totality of a person's humanity.

In a similar way, the film explores the beauty of sound, as one of the characters – ironically, an eye doctor, a man dedicated to preserving the organ of one sense – faces the prospect of impending deafness and yearns to create a mental catalogue of all the exquisite sounds of everyday life that he will soon no longer be able to hear and that we so routinely take for granted. Yet, like all the other characters, it is his spiritual emptiness and inability to make a meaningful connection with another human being that bring him his greatest obstacles to happiness. Podeswa also examines the part smell plays in making that vital human connection, as one of the characters – a lonely gay man – revisits his former lovers to take a whiff of their scent in an effort to discover if he can smell `true love.'

Yet `The Five Senses' is not merely a movie built on a clever `gimmick.' On the contrary, it breathes with the fullness of humanity because each of its many characters emerges as a fully developed, instantly recognizable human being. There are teenagers alienated by their own inability to fit into the accepted norm of society and made to feel guilty by their acts of careless irresponsibility. There are mothers terrified of losing their children, in one case, literally, as her young girl wanders off and disappears and, in another case, figuratively, as her adolescent daughter seems to be slipping away into inexplicable `strangeness.' There are adults unable to comprehend a life filled with failed relationships who strike out in desperation for that one last opportunity for happiness, often with the result that they end up further away from that universally desired goal than ever.

One of the most daring aspects of `The Five Senses' is that it does not succumb to the temptation to provide either a `happy' ending or even a conclusive one for all of its characters. The film acknowledges that life is a messy, never ending process of changing fortunes and personal growth and it stays true to that theme all the way to the end.

This brave, haunting and mesmerizing film definitely stands as one of the true movie finds of recent years – a true work of art!

The opening scene of "The Five senses" makes it clear that this is not a mainstream Hollywood shoot-them-up action flick. The beautiful subdued lighting and lovely slow music prepare you for a film closer in approach, sensibility and human interaction to European fare such as "Tous Les Matins du Monde". The cast is uniformly superb. The only moderately well-known cast member is Mary-Louise Parker who acquits herself splendidly as usual, though you get the feeling that the producers were anxious to have ONE name which was at least vaguely familiar to U.S. audiences.

The only weakness lies in the script. It does not unduly labor the "Five Senses" theme - five characters each have a flaw in one of their five senses. That would have made the film too much of an artificial academic exercise. Yet it slides into the opposite trap of not emphasising the importance of sense to two of the characters. The cakemaker apparently has no sense of taste, though that is barely apparent. Her lousy cakes might be the result of incompetence rather than handicap for all we are shown and her sensory deficiency is not an integral part of the story as it is for the opthalmologist who is going deaf. According to at least one review I read, the masseuse reportedly has a deficient sense of touch, which is not apparent at all. Indeed the scene where she massages the teacher, who is also the mother of the little girl who goes missing, is extraordinarily tender, gentle and sensuous.

The opthalmologist who is slowly losing his hearing provides some of the most poignant scenes. The writer is very aware of the saying that blindness cuts you off from things, deafness cuts you off from people. The character is obviously afraid of his growing disability enhancing his existing painful isolation. He is already separated from his wife and little girl and now faces losing his beloved music. He has to pay for sex. His prostitute takes pity on him, and after their intercourse she accompanies him to a glorious concert (paradoxically of religious music in a church!) and shows him sign language.

The other unforgettable scenes show the anguish of the mother of the missing little girl, and the remorse of the mother of the withdrawn teenager who lost her. It is a superlative performance by Molly Parker and contrasts favourable with the hystrionics shown by Michelle Pfeiffer in "The Deep End of the Ocean", where her character similarly loses her son. Curiously, Pfeiffer's character was portrayed as a practising Catholic, but was not shown as praying or arranging for any religious service to pray for the safe return of her child. Here, Molly Parker's character describes how she prayed for the first time in years. As Winston Churchill said, there are times when all pray, but here it is convincing and extraordinarily touching. Michael Medved in "Hollywood Versus America" notes how mainstream films hardly ever show their characters praying even in the direst circumstances. "The Five Senses" does not miss this obvious dramatic opportunity, nor does it unduly harp on it.

The predominant theme throughout the film is the difficulty of human communication and the essential loneliness of the individual. There is no intact normal family and you get the feeling that this is very much a "gay" perspective on the world and human relationships. This is not only because of the gay house cleaner and the brief male-male kissing scene, but the astonishing absence of any father - child relationship, which is a strong theme in much gay literature. The cakemaker is shown as anxious about her dying mother, but her father is not even mentioned. The missing little girl has a devoted mother, but again her father is not mentioned. The masseuse's husband is dead and she cannot communicate with her intelligent, but traumatised daughter.

To emphasise the loneliness refrain (another strong gay theme), the opthalmologist is separated from his wife and child. The housecleaner is apparently bisexual, but has no current male or female partner. The cakemaker has no current boyfriend, until the newly arrived Italian from her holiday romance appears - and even them his motivation is suspect, leading to a final complete misunderstanding on her part. The root causes behind the various characters' loneliness are never made not clear; this is a weakness in the writing and increases our difficulty in identifying with them, but it does not diminish our sympathy with at least some of their sorrows.

Overall, I give this unusual and beautifully crafted film 8 out of 10.

Chosen as the film to start the Perspective Canada series for the 1999 Toronto Film Festival, "The Five Senses" explores numerous lives in turmoil that are also intertwined in many ways.

Shot in Toronto, the story revolves around the disappearance of a little girl and how it affects the lives of those who knew her and those who feel responsible. More predominantly though, I believe it is about the bonds that are forged from one person to another in a variety of relationships and the strains that can test them. From friends old and new, parent to child, employer to employee, client to vendor, lovers past and present. All of these associations undergo a transformation of some kind in this film.

The film is beautifully shot with interesting set-ups but is not edited evenly throughout the feature. Scenes with Molly Parker and Mary Louise Parker are tightly edited and executed nicely, while some other scenes just seem to be drawn out a bit too much, the pace is a slow one, with numerous subplots that attempt to liven the drama.

But for art's sake and support of Canadian filmmaking, I would prefer not to draw negative attention to this film. There are some very moving scenes and excellent performances, but at the same time, I'm not sure I can recommend this one to just anyone.

without any doubt, this film is a perfect manner to exemplify the human been that we are. In this country at this time, it is difficult to find it in the video store. All this kind of events can occurred and it is probably that in certain moments one pass some experience like some of the characters. Incredible. Perfect. Marvelous. Sensitive

"The Sixth Sense" bedazzled us last year with its supernatural trickery. This year, "The Five Senses" deserves equal success by being merely natural -being able to tell a human story intelligently. The film is a collection of love vignettes with each character cleverly highlighting one of the human senses. Writer and director Jeremy Podeswa has intertwined a human drama of finding a missing little girl with each player contributing an intriguing and equal share of the story, crisscrossing each other's lives in near perfect structure and execution. "The Five Senses" is what "Timecode" wishes it could have become. Mary Louise Parker heads a powerful cast, each member with an absorbing tangent that you merrily want to follow: Robert (Daniel MacIvor) the gay house cleaner who pursues true love by trying to find that distinct scent, Rona (Parker) the hopelessly unlucky lover who only sees what she wants to see in a relationship, Roberto (Mario Leonardi) her amorous counterpart too wrapped up in Italian cuisine to understand American courtship, Richard (Philippe Volter) the French doctor so consumed with his ominous deafness until he is rescued by an unexpected consort, Ruth (Gabrielle Rose) the massage therapist who tries to consummate her love for her deceased husband every time she touches a client, and finally Rachel (Nadia Litz), a composite of all the senses, a young woman blinded by guilt both past and present and yet using her senses to strive for forgiveness. "The Five Senses" is intelligent enough to show us how each individual uses their senses to try to escape their human quandary - some succeed and some don't.