Ultimately Senseless
FILM: The Five Senses
DIRECTOR: Jeremy Podeswa
STARRING: Mary-Louise Parker, Gabrielle Rose
GRADE: C
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RONA (MARY-LOUISE PARKER) CAN BAKE A CAKE THAT LOOKS GREAT BUT LACKS FLAVOR.
SOUNDS LIKE SHE HAS A PROBLEM WITH ONE OF THE FIVE SENSES
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Normally, we associate high-concept motion pictures with big studio releases
and Tom Cruise. Hey, let's make a movie about Navy fighter pilots: Top
Gun. Hey, how about a movie about race car drivers: Days of Thunder.
Hey, ever thought about a movie about bartenders: Cocktail. Such movies
are commonly longer on core idea than they are on careful character development
and imaginative narrative construct. Unfortunately, I've now run across an
exercise in independent picture high concept. Hey, wouldn't a movie about
sensory perception be neat: The Five Senses. I'll grant that this
low-budget film fails for different reasons and with the advantage of wasting a
lot less money than the usual studio feature. But it fails all the same.
Written and directed by Jeremy Podeswa and set in contemporary Toronto,
The Five Senses is a faintly interrelated series of stories connected by
the human senses. Rona (Mary-Louise Parker) is a baker of celebratory cakes
that dazzle in design and taste like sawdust. She's out of touch with her taste
buds. Ruth (Gabrielle Rose) is a massage therapist who is so emotionally
clotted she can't make contact with her withdrawn teenage daughter Rachel
(Nadia Litz). She's out of touch with her fingertips. Rachel, meanwhile, is a
voyeur. She's out of touch with her eyes. Rona's best friend Robert (Daniel
MacIvor) is a bisexual housekeeper who thinks he will know true love by the
smell. He's out of touch with his nose. A neighbor of Ruth's is an eye doctor
named Richard; he's going deaf and is therefore losing touch with his ears. See
the connection among all these characters? Yes, that's right, their names all
start with the letter R, generally regarded as the hardest letter in the
alphabet to pronounce without frowning.
The action in The Five Senses starts on only four fronts. Rona is
awaiting the arrival of her hot-blooded Italian boyfriend Roberto (Marco
Leonardi), with whom she's planning to spend a lot of time in the horizontal
position. Best friend Robert is interviewing old lovers in order to smell them
(I am not making this up). Richard is trying to listen to a bunch of things
like trains and other people's private conversations in order to have a memory
bank of sounds for when he can't hear anymore. And Ruth is giving a massage to
Rachel's English teacher, Anna Miller (Molly Parker), who is obviously in touch
with all her senses because her name starts with a very prominent vowel. So
that Anna's 5-year-old daughter Amy (Elize Frances Stolk) won't have to watch
Mommie's naked body getting stroked, Ruth asks her daughter to take the child
to a park across the street. In the park, however, Rachel stops to ogle some
lovers doing the nasty behind thinly leafed bush. If you're out of touch with
your eyes, you lose sight of the child. Amy wanders off. Crisis ensues.
And eventually, the crisis is solved. The child is found, as who
didn't think she would be. Bad things don't happen to people in Canada the last
time I checked. And most everybody else comes to his or her senses in one way
or another, primarily through sex. Orgasm is good for you, dear. It'll make
that headache go right away, I swear. Richard hires a hooker and learns that
it's worse to have a deaf child than to go deaf yourself. There is some
consolation in that, I suppose.
Rona does a lot of sack time with Roberto and decides to bake not just a
cake with good taste but a cake that actually tastes good. Sadly, this decision
doesn't turn out to be quite the lifeline we expect. Ruth massages a man
instead of a woman and learns to forgive her daughter. Yes, the connection
eludes me, too. Rachel dresses a boy up in a wig, lipstick and girl's underwear
and learns that a boy in drag can still look mostly like a boy. And no, I don't
follow the import of this, either. Robert has a threesome and learns I'm not
sure what. From the look on his face, he seems to learn that he doesn't like
threesomes, but maybe he's just practicing saying the letter R.
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