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Jeremy Podeswa, who previously wrote, directed, and co-produced the critically acclaimed dramatic feature Eclipse, has batted another one out of the park. In his new film The Five Senses (starring Mary-Louise Parker), Podeswa creates a group of extraordinarily realized characters that share one thing in common -- each is brought into a crisis or towards a quest by one of the five human senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing. Recently I met with Podeswa for coffee and a chat about his new film. PlanetOut: What inspired The Five Senses? Jeremy Podeswa: The original germ of the idea came from a book I'd read -- A Natural History Of The Senses by Diane Ackerman. It was about the senses and how they function in our lives. I was quite fascinated by how she writes about the senses as things that really contribute to our enjoyment of life and the quality of life and yet we take them for granted. That made me think about how we take people for granted. How we take relationships for granted. I thought it was a very apt metaphor for contemporary urban living. PlanetOut: Several of the stories were obviously tied to their "assigned sense." For instance, a baker with no sense of taste, a doctor losing his hearing, a man with an acute sense of smell -- but the use of the "assigned sense" was less important to several other stories woven through the film. Why? JP: I didn't want people to think about the senses too much. It was a starting point and then from there the film sort of ripples out to deal with all kinds of things -- especially with love, relationships, and with the things that keep people from being able to connect with other people. PlanetOut: One of the most moving parts of the film dealt with the character of Robert, the housecleaner who has a very finely attuned sense of smell. JP: He was an interesting character for me to create because smell is not the most cinematic sense to deal with when compared to sight or hearing. So you must find something that is literary rather than in the filmatic treatment. I love the idea of smell as something that is really intimate, something that is really personal that connects to memory or emotions in a direct way. So we have this character who thinks he can smell love. He can smell everything else so acutely, so why not love? So he tries to meet all of his ex-lovers again to smell them and find out if there was any love left for him. PlanetOut: I was surprised when one of the ex-lovers turned out to be a woman. Up until that moment I had assumed that Robert was exclusively gay. JP: I like to defy expectation. It's very easy both in film and life to make very quick judgments about people. To assign labels before you have all the facts. It is a very important point that I try and convey several times in the film. For example, in the beginning of the film when a young girl meets a boy who shares her voyeuristic fascination, one presumes his heterosexuality and assumes he will become her love interest. But he becomes instead her kindred spirit and partner in crime, which to me is more interesting than a romance would have been. PlanetOut: Besides the use of the "five senses" as metaphor, the characters are connected by the disappearance of a small child at the beginning of the film. Is the missing child symbolic of something missing within them? JP: It's exactly that. Most of the characters in the film have been through things that left them damaged. When you've had your heart broken or been through relationships that haven't worked out, it's very hard to get back in there again and make yourself vulnerable. It not only takes courage, it requires a certain amount of innocence. Something we lose as youth fades. All of the characters in the film need to stop being so jaded and cynical. And the lost child is symbolic of the loss of innocence that traps them in sadness. PlanetOut: What feedback have you received from gays and lesbians who have seen The Five Senses? JP: Great! Especially now that it's starting to screen in the United States. Prior to the film opening here it played at a number of film festivals in Canada and Europe. There was very little feedback about the gay content when we screened it in Europe, because they don't really dwell on that so much. But gay audiences here are so eager for representation. I think the U.S. audience really likes that the gay content of the movie is so well integrated into the film. It's not a gay movie per se, in that gay issues are not central to the plot, but the gay characters have as much going on as the straight characters. Also, people like that the film subverts your expectation of sexuality. The character you think is gay turns out to be bisexual, the straight one turns out to be gay. My point is that it really doesn't matter, because everyone is in the same boat in the search for intimacy. We are all looking for love. PlanetOut: What is the message you want the audience to leave with? JP: A sense that there is hope in this crazy search for intimacy that we are all in. Even when things seem really difficult or problematic, remember that anything can be gotten through. You have to persevere. I think The Five Senses is basically a sophisticated statement about hope -- and about love. * Read the PopcornQ review of The Five Senses PQ MOVIE NEWS: PQ Video Hot List | Interviews | Advance Guide to Queer Film | Movie News Archive | PQ Video Hot Lists Galore MORE NEWS ON PLANETOUT: PlanetOut News & Politics | PlanetOutRadio | Entertainment
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