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!

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

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.

An enjoyable quiet movie that examines people's perceptions of the world and themselves. Worthy of a watch. I enjoyed Gabrielle Rose's performance. She was good in "The Sweet Hereafter" and very engaging in this movie. The rest of the cast was equally good. I do have a problem with the title. I kept thinking this character is this sense and this one is that sense which distracted me from the unfolding stories. I think a more generic title like "Sense" would have been better. The ending was unexpected.

"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.