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Perfect Sense (2011)

Director: David Mackenzie

Time Out rating

Average user rating

8 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

While Hollywood bores us with sundry CGI-heavy visions of the apocalypse, the very intimacy of this modest Glasgow-set production provides a far more affecting account of the sum of all fears. On one side of a courtyard, there’s the staff entrance of chef Ewan McGregor’s restaurant, on the other the flat belonging to epidemiologist Eva Green. He’s a commitment-phobic womaniser, she’s a damaged, aloof loner – so of course, they get it together... just as the world is surrendering helplessly to a mystery virus progressively depriving us of our sensory perceptions. The best film to date from director David Mackenzie (‘Hallam Foe’, ‘Young Adam’) is astutely pitched as a playful, even poetic riposte to familiar celluloid intimations of mortality, yet it’s also a serious and powerful musing on what makes us human. Yes, the love story is obvious, but the performers carry it off, while the prime frissons emerge from writer Kim Fupz Aakeson’s resonant imagining of where we’d be without smell, hearing, sight... Thrillingly ambitious, ecstatically romantic, utterly unexpected.

Author: Trevor Johnston

Time Out London Issue 2146: 6 – 12 October, 2011

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User reviews of this film

Phil Ince said...

Posted on Oct 12 2011 12:50 puzzled filmgoer - I was expecting the violent aggression to be much worse than it was but there was some chuckling in the flicks when Ewan McGrewgor started crying in bed, just before losing his sense of smell. It is quite a TV script but - maybe because my work is with people with sensory loss, the film resonated strongly with me.
The compensations for loss of smell and taste were intriguing and the bath scene raised some full-hearted laughs. But when deaf people were ordered to stay in their homes ("It's the safest place for you!") and then as blindness inevitably came, I felt the catastrophe and the pity of it. It had false notes but more true than false ones, I felt.

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puzzled filmgoer said...

Posted on Oct 12 2011 10:34 This was an odd one. Quite a few things to commend it for: e.g. great cast, some nice camerawork, interesting locations and sound design. However, it was totally predictable, the voiceover was extremely cringey, the scenes of insanity were laughable, and the characters were so underwritten that it wasn't possible to empathise with them. I couldn't really enjoy this because I felt slightly embarrassed for it.

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Oct 11 2011 22:46 Quite an unusual horror romance. Are there many of those?
There are a few telly-ish moments in the first half but the longer the film goes on and the more forceful it gets. Very well filmed and played. Eva Green is really fairly wonderful - and not unlike the beautiful Justine Blair.
You know!, Russell Oxley's wife.

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Kamal Ahman said...

Posted on Oct 09 2011 23:03 I don't know how you can assume Tyrranosaur isn't as good, without actually seeing the film John. As it happens. I've seen both and Tyrannosaur is brilliant - nuanced, authentic, gripping, hopeful. Perfect Sense is a mess of pretentious twaddle. It ill behoves you or Time Out to defend this juvenile nonsense - but especially without seeing the films you cite!!

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john o sullivan said...

Posted on Oct 07 2011 13:23 this film is being trashed by the british papers... so we can do without the spat above... really great movie,handled very well by the director.. probally more worthy of an audience tha tyranasauros

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anon said...

Posted on Oct 06 2011 14:18 Time Out trashed David Mackenzies other recent film You Instead a few weeks ago. These reviews are just irrelevant noise these days. No one cares. Too busy with Facebook.

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Nemo said...

Posted on Oct 06 2011 08:30 Hey Frank, no I didn't direct it, it's directed by David Mackenzie. Learn to read.

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Nemo said...

Posted on Oct 05 2011 13:23 Well the only way Trevor Johnston will ever see his name on a movie poster is through sycophantic quotes, not for writing/ directing/creating a film, so you can hardly blame him. I expect he keeps all the posters where he gets a quote, bless him.

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