Les cinq sens

The promise Jeremy Podeswa gave with his first film "Eclipse" is really fulfilled now in his second "Five Senses". Authentic atmosphere and the various aspects of a little bit neurotic life-feeling of metropolitain people is again in his new film. Podeswa has an astonishing hand for showing the daily tragedies with credibility and he really cares about his protagonists. Intelligent dialogues and good actors complete the very good first impression. A director with a great future !

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.

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!

Roger Ebert made a point once that you can always tell when you're watching a film made in Canada because they take their time telling the story. No different here as a bunch of fascinating plots all revolve at the same time. Some quiet surprises are sprinkled throughout that make complete sense to the characters but perhaps not as well by the viewer. Whenever you see Mary Louise Parker in any movie, you know you're in for something interesting. She plays a chef whose visual masterpieces never taste as good as they look. A highly original work of delicate screenwriting with some of the most potent quiet moments of any recent film.

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