Susan (Green) works as an epidemiologist, and comes to work one day to find a patient who has lost his sense of smell after having a nervous breakdown. Slowly, it starts happening to everyone across the world. Then over the course of the film, people lose their sense of taste, hearing and finally vision.
Michael (McGregor) works as a chef at a restaurant opposite Susan's flat. They slowly form a relationship, and the film explores that loss of the senses through them. The lovemaking scenes are quite good, they tenderly explore each other's bodies as the realisation dawns that they might lose more and more senses and to savour the experiences they have left.
The film is set in Glasgow, but has snapshots of Africa, Asia etc showing people around the world reacting to the disease, to give it a bit more of a global scale. A narrator interjects at points to describe what's happening. Some people online found the narration overbearing, but I quite liked it as it does give a sense of pathos to these scenes of people losing their minds and thinking that the world is ending.
But really the film focuses on the relationship of Susan and Michael. At first it's hesitant, then passionate yet tinged with sadness at the loss of the various senses. They are driven apart by a violent outburst from Michael before he loses another sense, but they reconcile at the end of the film, just as they both lose their vision and the screen fades to black.
It's a really poignant film, no grand adventure or action, but more a focusing on the smaller things- the little details. And of course in a film about losing the ability to sense those details, that works rather well. The cinematography is assured, with rusting dockyards, muddy estuaries, and a great sense of people's faces and acting. The scenes of how people compensate as they lose their senses, like making spicy or colourful food, or street performance art inviting people to remember smells of fields, are great. The sound editing when people lose their sense of hearing is also very well executed.
It's the kind of film that will make you think about what you take for granted in the world around you. The central performances by the two leads are brilliant, they imbue them with a real sense of character and the distress as this illness hits them is very well done. I hope more people will catch this on DVD, it's a quiet sort of film that won't appeal to some audiences, but taking the time to slow down and watch it for 90 minutes is well worth doing.
