Perfect Sense stars the excruciatingly hot and skilled actors Ewan McGregor, i.e. progressive bae and best smile ever, as a chef and Casino Royale’s Eva Green, whom I insanely thought for a brief moment as plain because such was my attraction to Daniel Craig, but she is eerily luminous, as a scientist. A global pandemic gradually robs people of their self-control then gives way to a permanent loss of one of their five senses starting with their sense of smell. Will they find a cure or will they lose all their senses, and if they do, what will they be left with?
I was really excited to see Perfect Sense because I love movies involving outbreaks, and it features an amazing cast. It also has Stephen Dillane, the actor who played Stannis in Game of Thrones, who is such a good actor that his son is a thespian, and Connie Nielsen, whom you may know as Wonder Woman’s mama, but whom I know as the political wife in Boss. I watched it a little under a year ago when Hulu notified me that it was going to expire, but it never felt like a perfunctory obligatory chore, but a real reward at the end of a hard day.
I did not bank on the fact that the Bible was absolutely right to forbid shatnez because the double metaphorical mixing of fabrics throughout Perfect Sense never quite blends into a comprehensive whole. Because this film probably had a modest independent film budget, it uses archival footage to depict how the outbreak looks around the planet. A part of my soul wondered about the original context of those images and if the people in it would appreciate their suffering being used for a movie. Imagine 9/11 footage used to depict the collapse of a biodome on another planet—sure it works, but does it trivialize the experience. Sure the film obviously must have done its due diligence and got the legal right to use the footage, but should it? It also felt dissonant visually because it did not match the visual style of the director so I could never get into the film without basically being jarred back into reality and remembering that I was watching fiction.
It did not help that ponderous narration accompanied the archival footage. Perfect Sense clearly intended this narration to be insightful and deep, but it just made me roll my eyes. Green delivers the narration, and she could make a shopping list sound riveting, but it is so hard to ignore the actual content. Occasionally it would work. The final scene almost makes me want to retroactively cosign every Calvin Klein advertisement inspired moment that preceded it. It packs an emotional punch and is the best part of the film, in part, because of the narration, but I can’t pretend. It was not all good. The film opens, “There was darkness. There is light. There are men and women. There’s food. There are restaurants. There’s work. Traffic. The days as we know them, the world as we imagine the world.” If that quote works for you, there is plenty more where that came from—go for it, but I warned you.
Perfect Sense also was an elaborate meet cute brought to you by a global pandemic. You got your romance in my pandemic. You got your pandemic in my romance. I am not naïve. Regardless of genre, the two hottest people in the movie usually get together so I was expecting it on some level, but it really is the meat of the movie. I was a little confused when we are first introduced to McGregor’s character, I actually thought the leads already knew each other, but it was another woman. I am uncertain if it was the lighting of the scene, my living room, my vision or if I suffer from some terribly specific Green vision deficiency.
We are supposed to believe that these characters have already suffered too much in love than there is no way that they could find happiness in each other when that is the exact reason that we are here. Come on! Unless Perfect Sense is the first movie that you ever saw, no one will find any suspense in this film. There is one early scene when Green’s character returns to work, she immediately outs herself as not really needing sick time, “Not sick, just unhappy. Unhappy, on account of a man.” Green deserves an award for delivering that line with a straight face. The movie could have won me over if Kristen Wiig randomly appeared just to deliver that line as if she was in another The Spoils television series then disappeared. The only thing that saves it is Dillane’s silent reaction, “We’re at work! Oversharing! We’re not friends! Whyyyyyyyy?!?” Stannis does not want to hear about your man problems and neither do I.
If you are looking for more reasons not to see Perfect Sense, there is a lot of animal suffering. People throw stones at seagulls. Bunnies are ripped to shreds to be devoured while alive. I do not recall if it was graphic, but it was disturbing, and on more than one occasion, I muttered, “Asshole! Fuck this movie,” under my breath.
Now that I am actually experiencing a global pandemic, how would I rate the pandemic depicted in Perfect Sense. Intriguing. I actually enjoyed how rapidly people got used to adjusting to life without senses. The best part of the film was the way that the illness played out across humanity and how it resonated with an element of the universal human experience. I think that the filmmakers were aiming for Blindness, the film starring Julianne Moore, and its levels of profoundness, but because of its embrace of shatnez, it was never able to sustain that tone. The intention was solid, but the outcome was way more superficial than they would have liked. There is an actual moment in the movie in which she is mocked for being profound, but she is actually like everyone else, and it was as if the movie was telling on itself. Instead of insight, we get platitudes, and it never sustains an emotional tone long enough for the viewer to appreciate it when it does work.
Perfect Sense’s ending is perfect, but I am not sure that the journey is worth the destination. Maybe it would have worked better as a short film or with a revision of the story. Make the lead couple already in a relationship at the beginning of the film, but it is at a turning point. Disaster films are usually about reuniting families anyway, and this film is no different, it just did so in a more traditional romantic drama way even if the context is unconventional.
I cannot recommend that you watch Perfect Sense unless you are unlike me and coming for the romance more than the global pandemic or you would be satisfied with Green and McGregor cavorting under any circumstances. I won’t judge you, but my standards are slightly different, and it was not for me. Contagion may be too tidy and clinical, but this film overcorrects.