Canadian films are really starting to have a feel of their own.  Maybe it’s their emphasis on character over flashy plot-based big-budget extravaganzas, or the use of ensemble casts rather than single star vehicles.  Or maybe it’s just because they use the same actors over and over.  But like the films of Atom Egoyan, Last Night and director Jeremy Podeswa’s earlier Eclipse, The Five Senses just feels… Canadian.

    Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because The Five Senses is occasionally a stunningly beautiful film.  The film features several parallel storylines, each of which an exploration of one of title objects, all roughly centered by the disappearance of a young girl.  A cake decorator (Mary-Louise Parker) whose product looks good but tastes bland takes in her Italian boyfriend (Marco Leonardi, from, coincidentally(?) Like Water For Chocolate) who can’t speak English but cooks like a master chef.  An optometrist discovers he’s losing his hearing and immerses himself in the sounds he soon won’t be aware of.  A house cleaner (Daniel McIvor, also in this month’s Beefcake) meets up with all of his former lovers in order to smell them for untapped love.  And so on.

    The storylines each have their varying strengths and weaknesses, but like Eclipse, Podeswa manages to get out the beauty of the strengths, capturing perfect little emotional moments in each of the segments, while not spending too much time on any of them, thus revealing too much  of their weaknesses.  The tale of a teenage girl, convinced she had the touch of death that killed her father, who meets a peeping tom, plays out like a more sensitive version of Welcome to the Dollhouse and provides the most bizarre moments.

    Then there’s that Canadian feel.  The overwhelming shadow cast over The Five Senses is one of vague melancholy, but a fair share of humor helps things from passing the border into melodrama.  The cast all gives terrific performances (though Egoyan regular Gabrielle Rose gets minimal screen time, leading me to think some sub-plots have been edited down), and while Eclipse has a more attractive look, The Five Senses has its share of stunning cinematography as well.

    The film does get a bit full of itself on occasion, as any film that uses the phrase “the smell of love” without smirking is likely to do, and certain sub-plots seem strained in order to connect to the others. Fans of major independent cinema (Egoyan, Hal Hartley, John Sayles, and while not technically an indie director, P.T. Anderson), however, should check this out.  It’s good and Canadian.