Perfect Sense review

Imagine walking into a fishmonger and not noticing the smell. Or drinking the finest wines known to humanity and tasting water. Now imagine if this sudden loss of sensory perception was happening, without explanation, to people all around the world.

In Perfect Sense, Ewan McGregor plays a chef, Michael, who meets an epidemiologist, Susan (Eva Green), as a strange epidemic that slowly robs people of their senses grips the planet. During what should be their honeymoon period, the couple find themselves suffering heightened feelings of grief and expressing irrational outbursts towards one another – not exactly the candle-light and oysters routine one would expect. The pair are forced to embark on their relationship in a world where being struck with sudden disability has become commonplace.

With neither explanation or cure for the phenomenon forthcoming, a state of pandemonium erupts worldwide and the film becomes both terrifying and strangely beautiful. Exploring the human side of science-fiction, Perfect Sense poses the question: would we rebel and ransack the world or find a collective solace in our loss?

As the film’s stoical mantra insists, life goes on, but that doesn’t stop director David Mackenzie from fashioning the kind of apocalyptic thrills more akin to zombie films. Granted, a severe olfactory pandemic is about as likely as zombies rising from the grave, but handled with this subtle sense of realism, it suddenly seems panickingly plausible.

The film constantly appeals to the audience’s visceral sense of perception, too: some shots look so raw you can almost smell them; others are deafeningly silent. Best of all, it plays on the common sense – forcing the audience to question whether, in a crisis, we would adapt and evolve or simply revert to a feral-like existence

In fact, Perfect Sense threatens to be one of those rare instances where the idea is actually more intriguing than the film itself. But as Michael and Susan lose their senses – and possibly each other – the myopic world of Perfect Sense becomes increasingly sensual and thrilling.