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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Five Senses, The
Fine Line Features
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for sexuality and language
Starring
Mary-Louise Parker,
Pascale Bussières,
Richard Clarkin,
and
Brendan Fletcher
Five people, each representing one of the senses, feel their way toward love or reconciliation through five interconnected stories taking place over a three day period in Montreal.
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Jeremy Podeswa
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Jeremy Podeswa
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: January 23, 2001
Video: January 23, 2001
Theatrical: July 14, 2000
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
105 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
Canada |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
A brilliant film--vivid, haunting, intelligent and in good taste, wonderfully acted, wonderfully written and directed.
100
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Traveling from the tragic to the comic, this multifaceted film is richly acted and imaginatively directed.
88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Thoughtfulness and artistry ...raise this small, quiet picture to moments of pure epiphany.
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Paula Nechak
If you can forgive some plot artifice and gloss, there's a seductively intuitive and resonant theme resting at the core of Jeremy Podeswa's haunting new film.
83
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
It's a lovely film that suffers from an overdetermined structure and a reliance on a sensationalized plot line that, quixotically, is ignored for long periods of time.
80
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
The story didn't fully answer all my queries about the characters, but did such a nice job of keeping me interested that I wound up appreciating the mysteries that remained.
75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
A story like Five Senses sounds like a gimmick, but Podeswa has a light touch when dealing with the senses and a sure one when telling his stories.
75
USA Today
Mike Clark
The five stories in The Five Senses flawlessly and even artfully create a unified mood.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Stack
A lot more than the sum of its delicately balanced parts.
75
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
A deft, elegant, melancholy tapestry of flawed outreach, and the big reason it succeeds is Podeswa's courage in dispensing with a lot of exposition and trusting the audience - and the faces of the actors - to fill a lot of what otherwise would be gaps.
70
Time
Richard Corliss
Manages to make its point--that we are all impaired, short on that rarest quality, common sense--without being imprisoned by its complex format.
70
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Narratively club-footed but directorially assured.
70
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
An elegant, deliberate film about loneliness and hope, connection and loss.
63
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
It is a gimmick, rather than an idea worth exploring.
63
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Pseudo art can be fun, though, even if it doesn't quite awaken all your senses.
63
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Most of the film is so purposefully bound by its construct that it feels more like a creative-writing project (sure, give it an A) than a movie (B-).
60
Mr. Showbiz
Kevin Maynard
Beautifully performed and filmed, but tiresomely schematic episodes like this one cause us to experience major sensory deprivation.
58
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Our senses may be the stuff of drama, but not when they're treated as nice and neat as this.
50
Miami Herald
Sara Wildberger
It manages just to be pleasant.
50
San Francisco Examiner
Wesley Morris
Particularly anticlimactic - the film itself seems sprung from molting yuppie catalogs.
40
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
Comes so freighted with tragedy and sensitivity that I left dreaming of converting the abject misery of one and all to everyday unhappiness with free drinks and a raucous sing-along down at the pub.
40
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
Don't expect to be wowed by a vast spectrum of delicacies, as the buffet here is composed of entirely obvious ingredients.
40
Film.com
Robert Horton
It's like one of the baker's cakes, handsomely rendered on the outside but lacking flavor.
40
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
The Five Senses, despite its good performances, is like looking through a filmmaker's sketchbook: strong outlines but little substance.
38
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
Fake-sounding dialogue, some over-deliberate performances and five amazingly trite linked stories.
38
Baltimore Sun
Ann Hornaday
There's less here than meets the eye, not to mention the ear, nose, tongue and fingertip.
30
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
By interweaving several stories, the movie suffers from a peculiar multiplier effect: it deepens its shallowness.
30
Film.com
Gemma Files
It's all quite precious, just not in a good way: "Postmodern" to a fault, deeply shallow, infuriatingly trite.
30
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Beautifully shot and littered with disquieting character business, the film is hog-tied by its own bad Big Idea.
30
TV Guide
Steve Simels
A self-consciously arty ensemble piece that's alternately exploitative, implausible and cliche ridden.
 The average user rating for this movie is 10.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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