Feature – UK / UK Premiere
David MacKenzie/UK/2010/90min/TBC
Showing @ Cameo 1, Sun 19 June @ 22:10
The contrasting emotional fragility and strength of the human race is put to the test in David MacKenzie’s Perfect Sense, a film that puts new love against a deadly epidemic.
Set in Glasgow, Perfect Sense follows chef Michael (Ewen MacGregor) and epidemiologist Susan (Eva Green) as they fall in love. But as their love blossoms, a new disease that robs of people of their physical senses spreads and threatens to rip them apart.
MacKenzie’s second film with McGregor, after Young Adam, is one of the most original romance films to be played out on screen in years. While it begins like any other love story, the film’s premise of the discovery of a devastating and terrifying epidemic that robs humans of their senses gives it a highly sensitive and delicate feel that makes it more of a sensory exploration of early love, infatuation and desire. As the senses diminish, the film’s reliance on the human body’s remaining senses creates a highly tense atmosphere that lasts throughout the film, as the sudden symptoms of the illness lead to the collapse of modern society, the human race is reduced to its most basic, feral and cruel. While the Perfect Sense’s title does elude to the loss of the physical sense, it’s that these physical losses are dangerously linked to our emotions and therefore our actions. As the effects of the disease take hold, a new image of humanity appears, and it’s one of vulnerability, of hope, and finally of determination, and to overcome what we are dealt in life. While Green seems a little cold in her role as the abandoned epidemiologist, McGregor excels in this tale of love and survival that’s a testament to the enduring nature of the human spirit.