Perfect Sense

It starts with a fit of wild mania and inconsolable despondency followed by the loss of one of the senses, with the process repeating itself every several weeks or so until all five are eliminated. In the madness of this apocalyptic endemic, a chef (Ewan McGregor) and a troubled young woman (Eva Green) begin a relationship and try to find normality in the face of the ever evolving chaos that surrounds them. With a plot perhaps lifted out of a 50s sci-fi television program, director David Mackenzie gives this material a lofty and artistically sensitive treatment that is gorgeous to look at, but doesn't payoff quite in the way it should. Green is an actress who impressed me with some of her earlier work ("The Dreamers", "Casino Royale"), whom I have been less than bowled over with by her more recent attempts, and again fails to deliver a captivating performance. McGregor is a competent actor who more often than not manages to find himself in less than compelling roles and here, again, that is case. I appreciated what Mackenzie attempts to do here and it is worth repeating again just how beautiful the photography is. I feel bad panning a film after my many carps about unintelligent, artistically shallow films of this nature but "Perfect Sense" fails to encapsulate its subject.