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The Five Senses
Canada 1999
Reviewed by Liese Spencer
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Five stories set in modern Toronto interweave. Anna gives Ruth a massage while Ruth's sulky 16-year-old daughter Rachel takes Anna's three-year-old daughter Amy out to play. In the park, Rachel leaves Amy and follows a necking couple into the woods. On Rachel's return, Amy is gone. As the police search the city, Anna allows the mortified Ruth to stay with her. Rachel, meanwhile, meets a youth in the park. Together they watch men cruising. Soon he reveals his fascination with crossdressing.
In the same apartment block, Richard, a French-speaking ophthalmologist, is losing his hearing. He makes a list of things to listen to and tries to build a "sound library" of aural memories, yet it is his friendship with a prostitute that breaks his sense of isolation. Fascinated with smell, house cleaner Robert interrogates his past lovers, both male and female, looking for the smell of love. After a ménage à trois with a young couple, one of whom designs perfumes, he finds the smell in a bottle. Robert's cake-making friend Rona is followed back to Canada by Roberto, her Italian lover. Although he cooks for her, she suspects him of an affair with another woman and they fall out. When Amy is found, Ruth and Rachel meet back at home and hold hands.
Review
"The senses are elemental, and in connecting us to the world, they connect us to others," says director Jeremy Podeswa in the press notes for The Five Senses. It's a profound-sounding statement which on closer inspection appears self-evident. Watching his ponderous exposition of this concept is a similarly underwhelming experience. Full of sombre portent as the film opens, his deftly interwoven tales of touch, taste, smell, sight and sound are less beguiling than they at first appear.
Shot in a wintry palatte of greys and browns and set largely among the light-starved apartments of a Toronto building, Podeswa's film opens with mother Anna entrusting her young toddler Amy to the care of sulky teenager Rachel. When Rachel's neglect leads to Amy's disappearance, the subsequent police search provides the link between the characters of the five linked vignettes.
Podeswa deserves praise for not always picking the most obvious metaphor (for the 'touch' story, the masseuse must learn how to make emotional contact with her child). Yet many of his slight tales remain fraught with a suggestive symbolism they cannot support. In one scene cake decorator Rona realises her cakes should taste good as well as look beautiful. But watching her mash a failed sponge into the bin, it's unclear what this has to do with her relationships with her Italian boyfriend and her dying mother.
At first her lonely friend Robert's decision to smell his way through a list of male and female ex-lovers seems more obvious. He's sniffing out real affection, but aside from being an unconventional approach to reviving relationships what does his bizarre scheme signify? When a young couple he works for present him with a gift of perfume, he says it "smells like love" and jumps into bed with both of them.
Robert's intuitive odyssey might have been engagingly surreal were it not for the earnestness with which Podeswa presents it. Indeed, the whole film is composed of 'significant' exchanges, characters swapping gnomic greetings before going on their way. The following is typical: "Why did you leave Belgium?" asks a policeman making door-to-door enquiries about the missing girl. "I thought I would like the winters," replies one character. "Did you?" "No."
Meticulously intercut, such scenes suppress character development and encourage only the emotional build-up to a sentimental knot-tying conclusion. (Even Molly Parker, so affecting as the necrophiliac in Kissed, makes little impression as the distraught mother.) For a film about the importance of intimacy and communication, little sense of real warmth or sensuality is conveyed here. The Five Senses is exquisitely made and well acted but it's still a slow dance of chilly ciphers to somnolent music in a mournful mise en scène.
Credits
- Director
- Jeremy Podeswa
- Producers
- Camelia Frieberg
- Jeremy Podeswa
- Screenplay
- Jeremy Podeswa
- Director of Photography
- Gregory Middleton
- Editor
- Wiebke Von Carolsfeld
- Production Designer
- Taavo Soodor
- Music
- Alexina Louie
- Alex Pauk
- ©Five Senses Productions Inc.
- Production Companies
- Alliance Atlantis presents a Five Senses production in association with Alliance Atlantis Pictures
- Produced with the participation of Telefilm Canada/The Canadian Television Fund/The Harold Greenberg Fund/TMN - The Movie Network/ Viewer's Choice Canada
- Produced in association with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
- Produced with the assistance of The Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit
- Developed with the assistance of The Sundance Institute/Canada Council for the Arts: Media Arts
- Executive Producers
- Charlotte Mickie
- Ted East
- David R. Ginsburg
- 2nd Unit Producer
- Eliza Haddad
- Line Producer
- Pre-production:
- Dean Perlmutter
- Associate Producer
- Shimmy Brandes
- Alliance Atlantis Head of Production
- Lacia Kornylo
- Executives in Charge of Production for CBC
- Brian Freeman
- Marlene Rogers
- for TiMe
- Wolfram Tichy
- Regine Schmid
- for Telefilm
- Bill House
- John Fulton
- Donna Radik
- Louise Tenenbaum
- for Fund
- Wendy MacKeigan
- Brenda Blake
- for TMN
- Lisa De Wilde
- Kathryn A. Smith
- for Sundance
- Lynn Auerbach
- Michelle Satter
- Nicole Guillemet
- Production Co-ordinator
- Max Burke-Phillips
- Production Manager
- Paul Spike Lees
- Location Manager
- Cory Kinney
- Post Supervisor
- Nina Sparks
- 2nd Unit Director
- Ed Sinclair
- Assistant Directors
- Trent Hurry
- Miguel Gallego
- Bryn Caron
- Script Supervisors
- Sheona MacDonald
- Matti Huhta
- Casting
- Toronto:
- Julia Tait
- John Buchan
- French:
- Joule Studio
- Juliette Menager
- Italian:
- Fabiola Banzi Casting
- New York:
- Adrienne Stern
- Secondary:
- Jennifer Capraru
- Story Editor
- Daniel MacIvor
- 2nd Unit Camera
- David Findlay
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- Tim Good
- Special Effects
- Darren Marsman
- Graphics
- Hamish Buchanan
- On-Line Editor
- Andrew Mandziuk
- Art Director
- R. James Phillips
- Set Decorators
- Darryl Dennis Deegan
- Erica Milo
- Clare's Paintings
- Julius Podeswa
- Rona's Cakes
- Vanessa LePage
- Anita Marcotte
- Jim Paterson
- Costume Designer
- Gersha Phillips
- Key Make-up
- Sylvain Cournoyer
- Key Hair
- Debra Johnson
- Main Title Design
- William Cameron
- Titles
- Film Opticals
- Opticals
- Film Effects
- Music Performed by
- Esprit Orchestra
- Conductor:
- Alex Pauk
- Alto Flute:
- Christine Little
- Oboe:
- Lesley Young
- Trumpet:
- Stuart Laughton
- Percussion:
- Blair MacKay
- Harp:
- Erica Goodman
- Violins:
- Fujiko Ihajishi
- Anne Armstrong
- Viola:
- Douglas Perry
- Cello:
- Paul Widner
- Bass:
- Tom Hazlitt
- Accordion:
- Matt Lebar
- Music Engineer/Mixer
- Jeff Wolpert
- Soundtrack
- "Amarilli mia bella" by Caccini, performed by Daniel Taylor; "O magnum mysterium" by Giovanni Palestrina, performed by Tallis Choir; "In preclare barbare" performed by Sine Kohine Ensemble for Medieval Music; "Come to My Window" by John Dowland, performed by Daniel Taylor; "Love Strikes Hard" by/performed by Carole Pope; "El Fool", "Lazuli", "Io Compassion" by Alejandra Nuñez, performed by Proyecto Urbano; "Mask" by Ramiro Fuerta, performed by Proyecto Urbano; "Graciela" by Ramiro Fuerta, Roberto Occhipinti, performed by Proyecto Urbano
- Sound Recordist
- Philip Stall
- 2nd Unit Sound
- Joseph Henoud
- Re-recording Engineers
- Lou Solakofski
- Martin Lee
- Dialogue Editor
- Janice Ierulli
- Sound Effects Editor
- Garrett Kerr
- ADR
- Recordist:
- David Yonson
- Eric Apps
- Editor:
- F. Angie Pajek
- Foley
- Artist:
- Terry Burke
- Recordist:
- Ian Rankin
- Sign Language Consultant
- Noeleen McCann
- Cast
- Mary Louise Parker
- Rona
- Pascale Bussières
- Gail
- Richard Clarkin
- Raymond
- Brendan Fletcher
- Rupert
- Marco Leonardi
- Roberto
- Nadia Litz
- Rachel
- Daniel MacIvor
- Robert
- Molly Parker
- Anna Miller
- Gabrielle Rose
- Ruth Seraph
- Tara Rosling
- Rebecca
- Philippe Volter
- Dr Richard Jacob
- Elise Francis Stolk
- Amy Lee Miller
- Clinton Walker
- Carl
- Astrid Van Wieren
- Richard's patient
- Paul Bettis
- Richard's doctor
- James Allodi
- Justin
- Gavin Crawford
- airport clerk
- Sandi Stahlbrand
- TV reporter 1
- Amanda Soha
- Sylvie
- Gisele Rousseau
- Odile
- Damon D'Oliveira
- Todd
- Sonia LaPlante
- Monica
- Janet Van De Graaf
- policewoman
- Paul Soles
- Mr Bernstein
- Clare Coulter
- Clare
- Roman Podhora
- policeman 1
- Shaun O'Hara
- Glen Peloso
- park cruisers
- Tracy Wright
- Alex
- Darren O'Donnell
- medic
- Greg Ellwand
- policeman 2
- Ola Sturik
- TV reporter 2
- Daniel Taylor
- singer
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Alliance Releasing (UK)
- 9,438 feet
- 104 minutes 52 seconds
- Dolby Digital
- In Colour