Perfect Sense

Yet another plague outbreak lays humanity low in filmmaker David Mackenzie's bleak European art-house drama. The setting is urban Glasgow, where Michael (Ewan McGregor) is a hardworking restaurant chef living near epidemiologist Susan (Eva Green). Their paths cross—and a love affair commences, fatefully—coinciding with the worldwide outbreak of a baffling new disease that progressively robs the infected of all five senses, one by one (sometimes accompanied by uncontrollable emotional outbursts and severe hunger pangs). It starts with an absence of smell, then a loss of taste (the latter a real blow to the restaurant field), and so on. There seems to be no cure, no contagion-vectors, no answers to the bizarre malady—except that it serves as a metaphor for, well, something or other, and the victims try to persevere as best they can while their inner worlds heartbreakingly diminish. Against this glum backdrop Susan and Michael enjoy their evanescent idyll even as society seems doomed to collective oblivion, although the refrain "life goes on" repeats mournfully every time another human sense fades away. A strong optional purchase. (C. Cassady)