pefect sense is like camus’ plague with a romantic twist, an apocalypse interpetated through a postive, humantarianized perspective. the title perfect sense is misleading because there’s no perfect sense in this case, more like “let us retrospect the love we’ve had before we lose all the senses.” the title perfect sense is just a catchy slogan which is irrelevant to the picture. inevitably, the film adapts some ecological, leftist discourse as background to give it an intellectual touch: humans gradually fail to grasp the senses they’ve taken for granted due to the harm they’ve done to the environment.

so the story whirls around a man and a woman who are inflicted with some issues with romance of their own. their love is intensified along with the worsening of this sense-losing contagion. to a certain point, they’ve lost everything except the final embrace they could have from each other as in the end, everyone in the world cannot smell, listen or even see anything at all. but my question would be, how about people who don’t have a lover, who have no family? so they die alone without a redeeming solace? perfect sense is surely an utopic dystopian picture which has high expectation/estimation of humanity as if the scriptor assumes that all humans would eventually forgive each other and embrace their one-remaining love out there. it’s quite a overtly optimistic premise of human nature. but on the other hand, i’ve been fed up with those sensationally negative amargeddon craps from hollywood as if the end of man becomes an opportunity for american hero to show off the size of his balls, the magnitude of his machismo since he’s just fucking man enough to carry the weight of the world all upon his trust-worthy shoulders. perfect sense here seems to make a low-key, down-to-earth statement “if the world ends, no one could save it, okay, let it be, life goes on!” (fine, love it!)

but one thing i do wish to “complain”..hm, more like a major drawback of this picture: the reactions people have when they lose their senses are sort of too MELODRAMATIC and oddly uniformed. (yes, i believe i would go insane if i suddenly cannot smell or listen, but not in THAT way)..also, the way the couple meet in the picture seems a bit contrived, and i don’t believe that two people could heat it on just like THAT, almost too cute: a woman just bursts out of tears in the memories of her diseased father then the guy follows her to console her then innocently sleep beside her and weep together with her. yeah, but ewan mcgregor is the guy who is capable to sell you that with his handsome, guileless face! especially when he’s paired with woman like eva green, who is just enticingly beautiful enoguh to convince you, that could happen. they seem to have great chemistry with those heart-felt smiles and gestures of intimacy, which tend to draw great envy as if you wish you were in love just like that. the leads’ chemistry compensate the defect of such CAMPY script.

the movie’s drawback is also its engrossing point, the simplified character-portrayals in minor characters (people outside the leads) effectively enhance the major story with a fable-esque aura, more like contemporalized myth/fairy-tale with appropriate amount of complex nuances in its subplots, an anti-thesis to the popular apoclyptic stories which tend to maneuver to complicate the stories with all the negative elements – a grandeur macrocosmos which absorbs each darkness and encompasses all the wild doomsday adventures as one giant adrenalizer..usually the backset is complicated with all the problems surrounding the major characters, but the major human characters are quite often flat and two-dimensional – desperate humans who have no time to think, busy with staying alive or saving the world.

but here, perfect sense is a tale developed through the microcosmos of two individuals whose personalities are complicated with the details of their past which contribute to their present emotional obstacles while the backdrop is quite simplified, things happen in much slower pace. thus the central focus is on the humans – the couples. as if it’s saying, even the doomsday is approaching, there’s still time for us to reflect oursevles and ruminate things over, and have one final everlastingly long hug with our beloved ones. gee, it’s quite humanistic, but almost too adorbaly idealistic..(but it’s quite pleasantly refreshing to see a apocalypse picture based on humans and the idea of humanity.)