The Five Senses

The Five Senses is a beautiful movie written and directed by Jeremy Podeswa. It is a movie about the lives of five people who, separately, embody one of the five senses.

Taste is portrayed by a professional cake decorator, Rona (Mary Louise Parker), who has concentrated so much on the aesthetic value of her cakes she has forgotten to make them taste good. She realizes this when her Italian lover comes to visit and shows her the passion in cooking.

Her best friend, Robert (Daniel MacIvor), decides to call all of his past lovers (guys and girls alike) and smell them because he believes that you can smell love. He thinks if he can find that one person that smells like love, then he can be truly happy.

Touch is represented by a Ruth (Gabrielle Rose) who is a massage therapist. She makes her living by touching other people, yet one gets the feeling she is rarely touched herself. One of the most poignant scenes in the movie is when a young man comes to her office, crying, and asks if she can see him. While she is massaging him he is sobbing and says that it's been so long since anyone has touched him.

Meanwhile, her daughter, Annie, (Molly Parker) portrays sight by discovering her voyeuristic tendencies with the help of a friend (Brendan Fletcher).

Richard (Philippe Volter) is a doctor who is losing his hearing. He makes a list of all the things he wants to hear before it is gone completely. He calls it his "library of sounds". At one point he calls and records his young daughter's voice and plays it back, as if to memorize it.

All of their lives are interconnected. They know each other, but you sense that they are all too wrapped up in their own senses to really notice what's going on around them. It's a lovely and bittersweet movie. Definitely worth the cost of renting it.