Five Senses, The

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

A brilliant film--vivid, haunting, intelligent and in good taste, wonderfully acted, wonderfully written and directed.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Traveling from the tragic to the comic, this multifaceted film is richly acted and imaginatively directed.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Thoughtfulness and artistry ...raise this small, quiet picture to moments of pure epiphany.

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.

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.

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.

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.

USA Today Mike Clark

The five stories in The Five Senses flawlessly and even artfully create a unified mood.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack

A lot more than the sum of its delicately balanced parts.

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.

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.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Narratively club-footed but directorially assured.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

An elegant, deliberate film about loneliness and hope, connection and loss.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It is a gimmick, rather than an idea worth exploring.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Pseudo art can be fun, though, even if it doesn't quite awaken all your senses.

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-).

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

Beautifully performed and filmed, but tiresomely schematic episodes like this one cause us to experience major sensory deprivation.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Our senses may be the stuff of drama, but not when they're treated as nice and neat as this.

Miami Herald Sara Wildberger

It manages just to be pleasant.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

Particularly anticlimactic - the film itself seems sprung from molting yuppie catalogs.

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.

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.

Film.com Robert Horton

It's like one of the baker's cakes, handsomely rendered on the outside but lacking flavor.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The Five Senses, despite its good performances, is like looking through a filmmaker's sketchbook: strong outlines but little substance.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Fake-sounding dialogue, some over-deliberate performances and five amazingly trite linked stories.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

There's less here than meets the eye, not to mention the ear, nose, tongue and fingertip.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

By interweaving several stories, the movie suffers from a peculiar multiplier effect: it deepens its shallowness.

Film.com Gemma Files

It's all quite precious, just not in a good way: "Postmodern" to a fault, deeply shallow, infuriatingly trite.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Beautifully shot and littered with disquieting character business, the film is hog-tied by its own bad Big Idea.

TV Guide Steve Simels

A self-consciously arty ensemble piece that's alternately exploitative, implausible and cliche ridden.