Feel World (2008)

I once knew someone who described himself, with transparent pride, as a ''sensualist.'' The fact that he would use that word was a tip-off that his primary experience of life wasn't through the senses at all but through his pesky, overanalytical brain. I got the same feeling from Jeremy Podeswa's The Five Senses, an intriguing yet overly patterned ensemble drama, set in Toronto, that keeps pausing to insist that its characters, beneath their urban-sophisto veneer, are irrational animals driven by mysterious, highly sensual urges. One is a self-effacing, bisexual house cleaner (Daniel MacIvor) who judges everyone by aroma; he's searching, he says, for the smell of love. Another is a forlorn optometrist (Pascale Bussieres) who happens to be going deaf (how's that for sensual-thematic overload?).

Podeswa has an undeniable talent for structure and mood. His characters are saddened romantics in search of that missing, inchoate...something, and for a while his discursive empathy is appealing -- he's a filmmaker wandering after wanderers. But The Five Senses grows precious and a bit tedious, perhaps because the characters are allowed to feel every hidden emotion but anger. Even a vaguely demonic teenager (Nadia Litz), whose passive-aggressive negligence results in a missing child, is sanctified by her broken heart. Our senses may be the stuff of drama, but not when they're treated as nice and neat as this. C+ -- OG

[BOX]

The Five Senses STARRING Daniel MacIvor Mary-Louise Parker FINE LINE RATED R 105 MINUTES

You Might Also Like

• Movie Review The Five Senses (2000) | Owen Gleiberman
• Video Review Picnic on the Grass | Lawrence O'Toole
• Movie News This week in Hollywood (1997) | Gregg Kilday
• Movie News Eva Mendes in talks for 'Bad Lieutenant' (1992)
• Movie News 'American Me's threat of violence | Alan Mirabella