The Five Senses

Plot synopsis:
The Five Senses is about interconnected stories linked by a building which examine situations involving the five senses. Touch is represented by Ruth Seraph, a massage therapist who is treating Anna Miller. Ruth's daughter Rachel accidentally loses Anna's pre-school daughter, Amy Lee, in the park, when Rachel is distracted by the sight of a couple making love in the woods. Rachel meets a voyeur named Rupert (vision), and they become friends as fellow outsiders while he teaches her the pleasure of observing others. They eventually go to one of Rachel's hiding places, where she has him dress like a woman.
Meanwhile, Ruth tries to help Anna cope with the disappearance of Amy Lee and stays the night at her home. Robert, a professional housecleaner, has an acute sense of smell, and seeks out the people he used to see to absorb their scents and see if he can smell any feeling for him or why they stopped caring for him. His professional clients include his friends Raymond and Rebecca, who makes perfume. Robert's friend Rona, a cake maker, has lost her sense of taste, and has romantic problems after Roberto, whom she met on a vacation in Italy, arrives. Dr. Richard Jacob, an older optometrist, is losing his hearing and wants to remember all the sounds before he goes deaf. He had separated from his wife Sylvie, but later connects to a woman named Gail (Pascale Bussières) who helps him to cope and feel better about himself. In the end, Amy Lee is found, and Ruth and Rachel are reconciled.

Tags: romantic, home movie

Review:
This year, "The Five Senses" deserves equal success by being merely natural -being able to tell a human story intelligently.
The film is a collection of love vignettes with each character cleverly highlighting one of the human senses.
Writer and director Jeremy Podeswa has intertwined a human drama of finding a missing little girl with each player contributing an intriguing and equal share of the story,  crisscrossing each other's lives in near perfect structure and execution.
Mary Louise Parker heads a powerful cast, each member with an absorbing tangent that you merrily want to follow: Robert (Daniel MacIvor) the gay house cleaner who pursues true love by trying to find that distinct scent,  Rona (Parker) the hopelessly unlucky lover who only sees what she wants to see in a relationship, Roberto (Mario Leonardi) her amorous counterpart too wrapped up in Italian cuisine to understand American courtship, Richard (Philippe Volter) the French doctor so consumed with his ominous deafness until he is rescued by an unexpected consort, Ruth (Gabrielle Rose) the massage therapist who tries to consummate her love for her deceased husband every time she touches a client, and finally Rachel (Nadia Litz), a composite of all the senses, a young woman blinded by guilt both past and present and yet using her senses to strive for forgiveness.
Writer/director Jeremy Podeswa has fashioned a work of great poetic form and insight centered around a group of people who share the universal need to find true love and acceptance in a world where wounded and shattered relationships all too often result in magnified loneliness and despair.
Like all of us, each of these characters gropes towards the dual goals of intimacy with others and acceptance of oneself that are essential for human happiness.
Some succeed, while others fail  just as in life  but none of the characters is left unchanged by the experience.`The Five Senses,' though it has a plot, is more of an emotional mood piece than a narrative-driven drama.
In fact, one of the strongest themes running through the film is its examination of the part our senses play in defining our world and character.
The quiet, hushed tone, the muted autumnal colors, the slowly moving camera, the haunting musical score all combine to create an atmosphere in which the audience can become conscious of every sight and sound that comes our way.
In our effort to establish meaningful intimacy with other human beings, we most typically rely on the sense of touch  yet, this can serve, Podeswa shows us, as much to trap us into a false intimacy as to lead us into one that is genuine and lasting.
One of the most moving moments in the film occurs when a gay man  most probably an AIDS patient  breaks down in tears during a massage session, his heart broken because no one has dared to touch him in so long a time.
In a similar way, the film explores the beauty of sound, as one of the characters  ironically, an eye doctor, a man dedicated to preserving the organ of one sense  faces the prospect of impending deafness and yearns to create a mental catalogue of all the exquisite sounds of everyday life that he will soon no longer be able to hear and that we so routinely take for granted.
Yet, like all the other characters, it is his spiritual emptiness and inability to make a meaningful connection with another human being that bring him his greatest obstacles to happiness.
Podeswa also examines the part smell plays in making that vital human connection, as one of the characters  a lonely gay man  revisits his former lovers to take a whiff of their scent in an effort to discover if he can smell `true love.'Yet `The Five Senses' is not merely a movie built on a clever `gimmick.'  On the contrary, it breathes with the fullness of humanity because each of its many characters emerges as a fully developed, instantly recognizable human being.
There are mothers terrified of losing their children, in one case, literally, as her young girl wanders off and disappears and, in another case, figuratively, as her adolescent daughter seems to be slipping away into inexplicable `strangeness.'  There are adults unable to comprehend a life filled with failed relationships who strike out in desperation for that one last opportunity for happiness, often with the result that they end up further away from that universally desired goal than ever.
One of the most daring aspects of `The Five Senses' is that it does not succumb to the temptation to provide either a `happy' ending or even a conclusive one for all of its characters.
The film acknowledges that life is a messy, never ending process of changing fortunes and personal growth and it stays true to that theme all the way to the end.This brave, haunting and mesmerizing film definitely stands as one of the true movie finds of recent years  a true work of art!.
The promise Jeremy Podeswa gave with his first film "Eclipse" is really fulfilled now in his second "Five Senses".
Authentic atmosphere and the various aspects of a little bit neurotic life-feeling of metropolitain people is again in his new film.
Chosen as the film to start the Perspective Canada series for the 1999 Toronto Film Festival, "The Five Senses" explores numerous lives in turmoil that are also intertwined in many ways.Shot in Toronto, the story revolves around the disappearance of a little girl and how it affects the lives of those who knew her and those who feel responsible.
Scenes with Molly Parker and Mary Louise Parker are tightly edited and executed nicely, while some other scenes just seem to be drawn out a bit too much, the pace is a slow one, with numerous subplots that attempt to liven the drama.But for art's sake and support of Canadian filmmaking, I would prefer not to draw negative attention to this film.
The five senses is a truly lovely film.
It takes a look into the lives of several people, most of whom are somehow the embodiment of a sense.
Yet the fact that they are so involved in a particular sense prevents them from experiencing life fully.Sight is embodied in a young woman who bakes designer cakes.
Sight is also the sense of a young man who voyeuristically watches men hook up in a park, but doesn't himself experience physical fulfilment.Hearing is embodied in the bittersweet story of a doctor who is losing his hearing, and is concerned with hearing this favorite sounds one last time.
And finally, taste is embodied by the Italian lover of the cake baker who is constantly cooking, because it is his only real way of communicating with her.These people's lives occasionally intersect because they all live work, or otherwise have ties to the same building.
In the end, not all of the stories are resolved, which is actually good because it keeps us thinking and allows us to revisit the characters and imagine a number of plausible endings.The film has a beautifully austere formality about it.
We see very profound emotions before us, but experience them intellectually.I can see that this film is not for everyone, but is great for those interested in a well crafted, thought-provoking experience..
But it is beautiful to see a film which show so many senses only by showing five of them..
I kept thinking this character is this sense and this one is that sense which distracted me from the unfolding stories.
I think a more generic title like "Sense" would have been better.
The Five Senses does that, from the beginning to the end, in a way where you know leaving your seat will cause you to miss a vital part of the movie.
It's as simple as that and by not watching The Five Senses, you are missing out on a touching film..
And that is the quality that I found most appealing and more like real life.There are gentle stories here woven around the central premise of a young child's disappearance and the reaction to this event is seen as background in many of the scenes which is a technique very cleverly done.There is also the haunting singing of someone in an apartment in the building where all the interaction and often non-interaction of the other characters takes place.
I did not know what the earthy Roberto saw in her.I liked very much the character of Raymond searching for the scent of love in all his ex lovers.
I feel they are more reflective of reality, no Hollywood quick fix endings just a slice of life beautifully acted and photographed that just stays with you a little longer than the A-B plot lines of most movies.8 out of 10..
The beautiful subdued lighting and lovely slow music prepare you for a film closer in approach, sensibility and human interaction to European fare such as "Tous Les Matins du Monde".
"The Five Senses" does not miss this obvious dramatic opportunity, nor does it unduly harp on it.The predominant theme throughout the film is the difficulty of human communication and the essential loneliness of the individual.
Roger Ebert made a point once that you can always tell when you're watching a film made in Canada because they take their time telling the story.
Some quiet surprises are sprinkled throughout that make complete sense to the characters but perhaps not as well by the viewer.
Whenever you see Mary Louise Parker in any movie, you know you're in for something interesting.
"Five Senses" is a Robert Altman-like large ensemble meeting "All About My Mother."It has a didactic theme as there's an eye dr.
going deaf, a baker constructing tasteless, attractive looking cakes, a lover whose cooking tastes delicious but because of foreign language is perceived as not speaking at all, a cleaner whose job it is to eliminate odors seeking the smell of love, and no shortage of voyeurs of the 5 senses, including a massage therapist.And it all comes down to that in matters of the heart and intimacy you cannot trust your senses.
The loose ends are mostly tied up to some satisfaction, though not all happy endings.It was nice to pick out Canadian actors from various little movies and TV shows.
Makes you think about how much you actually need ALL your senses to live.
These are interconnected stories with the individual senses as the theme.
This movie's central idea feels more like a gimmick.
However there are some characters that feel like unwanted interruptions in the flow of the movie.
There were a couple of characters that were somewhat interesting, however, the storyline never delved deeper into their personalities the way I had hoped...and left them being empty shells of people with no real backgrounds or insights into what made them tick or why they were the way they were.
The ending was a HUGE disappointment with with one of the major characters...(I won't say who or how, so as not to ruin it for someone else who might be into this kind of film)...but I was left feeling like I totally wasted my time watching this movie!!
This film very accurately shows how people endure life's struggles.
`The five senses' is a very interesting movie from beginning to end; I like it since it shows the way people behave, communicate, and feel.
It's the true side of human nature, that's why I think it's worth watching.
We can see the way this represents the five senses of people.
The main character Rona (Mary Louise Parker) was utterly outstanding as well as the Italian man Roberto.
I liked Mary Louise Parker's performance in `the portrait of a lady', so I think she was appropriate to play the friendly and strange Rona.
The supporting actors also carried out their roles admirably.This movie shows us the way those complicated characters are involved in their senses.
We see the 5 senses in this movie.
The sense of hearing is personified by a doctor, who is getting deaf and wants to hear his favorite sounds one last time.
Finally the Italian man carries out the sense of taste, since he cooks and always tastes his food.This is a pretty interesting movie, because it could cause many interesting discussions; since many people have different views, everybody is capable of seeing the five senses in a different way.
This is an original and interesting film, which shows us the human perceptions.
I myself am a countertenor like Daniel Taylor, and I know that my sense of hearing is very important for me!Likewise, I want to say *BRAVO* for the inclusion of Daniel Taylor in the film!
--Only the movie Farinelli features one (though, playing a castrato!) I think that film is a great way to open the public to this new (though very old!) way of sining.Perhaps the goal of this film, and the reason why it is so good, is the challenge to thye audience to look at what they value, and insert with that philosophic questiing, new horizions on every front.~Carson.
Finally, the (subject of)five senses were nicely interwoven throughout the films -- nothing too heavy-handed.
I just don't understand why people like this film.
It sounded wonderful: An exploration of the five senses through the lives of five people that interconnect.
Well done, and the acting was fantastic :) It's a very interesting movie and well worth your time if you have nothing else to do on a Saturday morning, he-he!!
There is a massage therapist who cannot touch her daughter, an eye doctor who is going deaf, a prostitute with a deaf daughter, a baker with little sense of taste whose boyfriend cannot talk English, a gay man who is obsessed with odours and who believes that he can smell love.
After just viewing this film, I found myself appreciative of the attempt, but the sad fact remains: the film leaves you with so many loose ends, you have to wonder why Jeremy Podeswa  started so many plot lines to begin with.
Most of the characters in the film end up in the same place they were where they began, but with not a gain in wisdom or understanding.
Numerous characters searching for intimacy and human connections.
It feels like a film made by aliens who've been observing human emotions but have never experienced them first hand.
Still, it has a good cast and a well structured story that doesn't tie all the loose ends up too tightly..
This film even has an event, which has been done over and over in film but, just because you are not attached to a plot it seems like the most original event in the movie.
Our sense, specially sight and sound are over stimulated by this beautiful movie.
An enjoyable quiet movie that examines people's perceptions of the world
An enjoyable quiet movie that examines people's perceptions of the world
kept thinking this character is this sense and this one is that sense which
It's much like it tries too hard, too hard to wanted to fall in 5 senses in order to speak the film's name.
anyway, I love art films like life, this one, really is a well intentions and ideas but so poor in flavor and style..
This is one of those films that must have looked very good in concept but fails in execution.
I saw this movie five times and for those among you who missed it, be sure you can get your hands on a video or dvd.It will stimulate al least three of your five senses....
So, why not make a movie about five people each having an issue with one of the senses?
Getting goose bumps yet?Such is the shallow nature of "Five Senses", another in a fad of boring "Magnolia" type wannabee flicks which doggedly hammers at its story of loosely interconnected characters in a futile attempt to make it fit its lame premise.
Plot a bit too constructed, gives a feeling of watching a French movie where everything has a message or meaning which, if you don't understand, you're stupid.
Each character is dedicated to one and they present it under a magnifier which could make you see these senses from a different angle.Acting above average and screen composition pretty nice..
Visually rich, somewhat slow paced, and hung together by varied amounts and quality of connection between the characters and a slight plot, the film manages to hold audience attention and intrigues the viewer.
Many fascinating new faces to watch, moderate amount of tension, excellent acting, and an interesting-enough story line make this Canadian film worth seeing..
This is not a complicated movie, its a film about love, trust, desires, lost, suffering, in other words, of every day contemporary life.It so easy to watch that you feel part of the film because you can easily relate to one or more of the characters which go from a "freak" teen girl to a mature homosexual.Jeremy Podeswa made a beautiful film about life that makes you think about your own life and how are you living it.
Of course, they create the atmosphere so good, together with the story and the characters.
we can see 5 different story's in the film, which connected by technical things (live in the same building, work together or for each other) and the fact that they're all telling us story's about- family relationships, love, and craving for warmness.
Films like these are in vogue - a well thought out plot involving an interesting cast of characters that are connected in some way.
But the film is not really in need of anything like that and in no way does it fall short of maintaining viewer amusement.Well acted, well scripted and well shot.
Now, an interesting question is how many people think that Egoyan is just about the lives of the characters, that it is constrained to the story?