(1999, 104 min, Canada, Jeremy Podeswa)

Jeremy Podeswa does his interweaving of storytelling again in this film about the five senses. His earlier work Eclipse was also nicely told. In this film, each of the five main characters has a related sense. Rona (Mary-Louise Parker) is a cake decorator whose work look great but have no flavor. Rona's fling Roberto (Marco Leonardi) from Italy decides to move into her life. Her best friend Robert (Daniel MacIvor) is a bisexual professional house cleaner who uses his strong sense of smell to find love. Robert tidies the office of Richard (Philippe Volter), a French eye-doctor who is slowly going deaf. Ruth (Gabrielle Rose) shares the same office building as Richard and is a widowed massage therapist whose touch soothes her clients but fails to be in touch with her daughter Rachel (Nadia Litz). Rachel is a troubled teen who loses the daughter of Anna Miller (Molly Parker) while in a park.

Source : Obtained from QueerCinema.Com

The Five Senses
(1999, Canada) 
Director: Podeswa, Jeremy 
Starring: Mary-Louise Parker ; Daniel MacIvor ; Gabrielle Rose 

Canadian filmmaker Jeremy Podeswa's The Five Senses is a sensually provocative film, which uses the five human senses as a touchstone for several intricate interconnected stories. 

Set in Toronto over a three-day period, during which a little girl has disappeared, The Five Senses follows five characters that live or work in the same building and are somehow linked to the missing girl. Her mother Anna (Molly Parker) is a client of massage therapist Ruth (Gabrielle Rose). Ruth's daughter Rachel (Nadia Litz) was supposed to be watching the girl in the park but instead was pulled into a voyeuristic game with a cross dressing gay boy named Rupert (Brendan Fletcher). Ruth's neighbor Rona (Mary-Louise Parker) is a cake baker and decorator with an impaired sense of taste, who finds herself the host of Roberto (Marco Leonardi), a passionate chef she met on vacation in Italy. Ruth and Rona share a building with Richard (Philippe Volter), an eye doctor who is losing his hearing but is striving to build a mental library of favorite sounds. Finally there is Ruth's best friend Robert (Daniel MacIvor), a cynical bisexual housecleaner convinced he can smell love and who is determined to hunt down all of his former lovers to sniff out lingering affection. Representing touch, sight, taste, hearing, and smell, the five characters share a fundamental inability to make meaningful human contact. 

The entire cast is superb, but Mary-Louise Parker (Fried Green Tomatoes) and Daniel MacIvor (Beefcake) are coloring with every crayon in the box. Praise also goes to writer/director Jeremy Podeswa. Although his style completely mimics fellow Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), that does not diminish the originality of this sensuous and entertaining film. 

The Five Senses works on many levels. Its theme is one of searching -- for love, for sexuality, for understanding, for the child, and the child within. Although the five characters are diverse, it is clear that the missing girl represents the loss of the child in each of them. And while the narrative seems to be just about the exploration of their primary senses, it is in fact more about their journey to find the missing elements in their lives. 

--Steve Pride 

Source : Obtained from PlanetOut.Com