Valentine’s Day 2018: Perfect Sense is perfect viewing

For Valentine’s Day this year, we recommend checking out Perfect Sense — an underrated romantic gem starring Eva Green and Ewan McGregor.

Romantic comedies are to Valentine’s Day what horror is to Halloween. Light and whimsical, they capture the spirit of a holiday that, in its modern incarnation, revolves around the worldly pleasures of chocolate and roses.

Yet, they aren’t very romantic. Despite their reputation for theatricality, romantic comedies have simple charms. They woo audiences with engaging characters (or somewhat engaging actors) and sharp dialogue. Their fantasies are anchored by real insight into the nuances of relationships, cultural norms, and human desire. In other words, they emphasize intimacy, which can be satisfying but in a very different way from romance.

For me, romance at its most irresistible conjures a sense of grandeur. It’s Rick saying goodbye to Ilsa; Scotty and Madeleine kissing on a cliff while violins crescendo; Jack and Rose sailing at the prow of the Titanic; Ennis and Jack riding through the mountains of Wyoming. It’s more Romeo and Juliet than Much Ado About Nothing.

So, if you’re struggling to choose a movie to watch this Valentine’s Day, allow me to make a case for Perfect Sense, a sci-fi romance by Hell or High Water director David Mackenzie.

An epidemiologist named Susan (Eva Green) and a chef named Michael (Ewan McGregor) share cigarettes at her Glasgow apartment building one day. Naturally, they hit it off, and before long, they fall in love. While their relationship blossoms, however, a strange disease spreads across the globe, progressively depriving people of their senses. Smell goes first, followed by taste, and so on.

Suffice to say, this is not your classic girl-meets-boy tale. Perfect Sense opened in 2011 to tepid reviews, and, in all fairness, the premise does seem ridiculous on paper. For example, it asks you to believe that people would eat soap if they lost the ability to taste. Watching the movie for the first time in 2016, I was bewitched. I was too busy being swept up in a whirlwind of emotion to care much about logic.

Isn’t that the genre’s essence? Like horror, romance favors sentiment over intellect, granting validity to impulses normally dismissed as irrational — love, lust, fear, paranoia. In Perfect Sense, sentiment threatens to engulf society. Early on, Susan and Michael realize each sense is bound to a certain emotion, which becomes heightened when the sense fades. An outbreak of sadness precedes the loss of smell, and hearing loss triggers a frenzy of rage.

We see the epidemic unfold in montages interwoven with the narrative — images of mayhem and devastation accompanied by a mournful voiceover by Kathryn Engels. It feels apocalyptic and here, the apocalypse doesn’t provide a window, revealing the absolute truth of the world, so much as a mirror, reflecting in the world the inner turmoil of its inhabitants.

This, I’m aware, doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement. After all, apocalyptic fiction doesn’t exactly go hand in hand with Valentine’s Day. Plus, with the real world so full of uncertainty and dread right now, it comes across as rather redundant. But if escapism helps people cope with an unpleasant reality, so does its cousin, catharsis. There is a unique thrill in the act of confronting a conflict and resolving it, or at least leaving unscathed.

In the end, though harrowing at times, Perfect Sense isn’t bleak. On the contrary, it’s uplifting, a passionate ode to the wonders of existence. Think HBO’s The Leftovers condensed to roughly 90 minutes. (Speaking of which, Max Richter contributes an aching, lyrical score that seems to embody in its lilting notes the entire spectrum of human feeling.) The film believes that experience transcends the sum of our senses, and love amounts to more than chemical reactions. All the little things we do matter, even if they only last for a moment.

And, yes, above all, it’s deeply romantic. Honestly, with Eva Green and Ewan McGregor as the leads, how could it not be? Individually, they’re ridiculously attractive; together, it’s a miracle the screen doesn’t spontaneously combust.

Perfect Sense is available to stream on Hulu.

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