Mary-Louise Parker in The Five Senses (1999)

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The Robbins Recipe: Decalogue meets The Sweet Hereafter. This Polish-Canadian director obviously worships both the Polish Kieslowski and the Canadian Atom Egoyan.

Well, by golly, if you're gonna choose a role model, those two guys are a sight better than Ed Wood, but you know you're going to choose the Art House Circuit. This film comprises several stories in the urban apartment environment, each of them based on one part of a related set. Is it Kieslowski's Decalogue? Nope, instead of the ten commandments, it's based on the five senses.

Each of the tangential stories involves one of the senses in some way. One man thinks he can smell love. A doctor is losing his hearing. A cake designer is in love with a chef. You get the idea. A masseuse is there for the touch segment, and a voyeur represents sight. Some of the characters know each other.

The stories are loosely held together by the fact that a little girl disappeared from their apartment building, and that story dominates the Toronto news during this time period. (For example, the voyeur is making a move on the woman who was babysitting the little girl.)

I'm already written my own Kieslowski film. It is a requirement for anyone with a Polish last name. Since Three Colors, Five Senses, Seven Deadly Sins, and Ten Commandments are already taken, mine will be called Nine Positions. I will use the baseball diamond as my allegory for urban life, with Home representing Home.

I toyed for a while with the idea of letting Second Base represent Home, but I'm just not capable of thinking outside the (batter's) box. Each of the nine players will have a story, and they will occasionally intersect, mostly when they run into each other trying to catch a foul ball. The pitcher will represent the forces that oppose us in life. The first baseman, brute strength. And so forth.

Finally, it will all come down to Home, the place where dwells the catcher, the ultimate symbol of the worker in the industrial revolution, forced into harsh conditions by his capitalist masters, struggling only to finish his job and protect his Home from those would violate it. Look for a brilliant cameo by Robert DeNiro as the Third Base Coach. Some people say that the richly realized visual poetry of his bunt signal alone was touching enough to win him an Oscar nomination.

I'll have it finished as soon as I find the correct Celtic Folk Music, properly eerie and evoking the feeling of loneliness each of the ballplayers feels when he's batting. I'm thinking of using the spooky Scottish moors to play the part of Right Field.

Oh, yeah, the Senses movie. If you like Kieslowski and Egoyan, you will like it. It takes a long time to get warmed to the stories, but once I did, I found them interesting, and quite touching in some scenes.

If you like more mainstream movies, pass it by. It's all about feelings, not the senses. Each of the characters is at an important point of passage in life, and they are trying to deal with it. Not really much of a storyline or any action.

By the way, is there a law in Canada which requires Molly Parker to be in every Canadian movie?

Nudity Report: Mary-Louise Parker is seen topless in a sex scene, a middling distance from the camera.

Critics Vote: Roger Ebert 3/4, Berardinelli 3/4, Apollo 80.

IMDB Summary: 7.5 out of 10

Box Office: Art house circuit. 40 screens, half million gross.

DVD Info: Widescreen anamorphic, and a standard 4:3 version. No features.

Written by: Scoopy …Scoopy.net