Veronique Kwak (groaningbitch)

pefect sense is like camus' plague with a romantic twist, an apocalypse interpetated through a postive, humantarianized perspective. the title perfect sense is misleading because there's no perfect sense in this case, more like "let us retrospect the love we've had before we lose all the senses." the title perfect sense is just a catchy slogan which is irrelevant to the picture. inevitably, the film adapts some ecological, leftist discourse as background to give it an intellectual touch: humans gradually fail to grasp the senses they've taken for granted due to the harm they've done to the environment.

so the story whirls around a man and a woman who are inflicted with some issues with romance of their own. their love is intensified along with the worsening of this sense-losing contagion. to a certain point, they've lost everything except the final embrace they could have from each other as in the end, everyone in the world cannot smell, listen or even see anything at all. but my question would be, how about people who don't have a lover, who have no family? so they die alone without a redeeming solace? perfect sense is surely an utopic dystopian picture which has high expectation/estimation of humanity as if the scriptor assumes that all humans would eventually forgive each other and embrace their one-remaining love out there. it's quite a overtly optimistic premise of human nature. but on the other hand, i've been fed up with those sensationally negative amargeddon craps from hollywood as if the end of man becomes an opportunity for american hero to show off the size of his balls, the magnitude of his machismo since he's just fucking man enough to carry the weight of the world all upon his trust-worthy shoulders. perfect sense here seems to make a low-key, down-to-earth statement "if the world ends, no one could save it, okay, let it be, life goes on!" (fine, love it!)

but one thing i do wish to "complain"..hm, more like a major drawback of this picture: the reactions people have when they lose their senses are sort of too MELODRAMATIC and oddly uniformed. (yes, i believe i would go insane if i suddenly cannot smell or listen, but not in THAT way)..also, the way the couple meet in the picture seems a bit contrived, and i don't believe that two people could heat it on just like THAT, almost too cute: a woman just bursts out of tears in the memories of her diseased father then the guy follows her to console her then innocently sleep beside her and weep together with her. yeah, but ewan mcgregor is the guy who is capable to sell you that with his handsome, guileless face! especially when he's paired with woman like eva green, who is just enticingly beautiful enoguh to convince you, that could happen. they seem to have great chemistry with those heart-felt smiles and gestures of intimacy, which tend to draw great envy as if you wish you were in love just like that. the leads' chemistry compensate the defect of such CAMPY script.

the movie's drawback is also its engrossing point, the simplified character-portrayals in minor characters (people outside the leads) effectively enhance the major story with a fable-esque aura, more like contemporalized myth/fairy-tale with appropriate amount of complex nuances in its subplots, an anti-thesis to the popular apoclyptic stories which tend to maneuver to complicate the stories with all the negative elements - a grandeur macrocosmos which absorbs each darkness and encompasses all the wild doomsday adventures as one giant adrenalizer..usually the backset is complicated with all the problems surrounding the major characters, but the major human characters are quite often flat and two-dimensional - desperate humans who have no time to think, busy with staying alive or saving the world.

but here, perfect sense is a tale developed through the microcosmos of two individuals whose personalities are complicated with the details of their past which contribute to their present emotional obstacles while the backdrop is quite simplified, things happen in much slower pace. thus the central focus is on the humans - the couples. as if it's saying, even the doomsday is approaching, there's still time for us to reflect oursevles and ruminate things over, and have one final everlastingly long hug with our beloved ones. gee, it's quite humanistic, but almost too adorbaly idealistic..(but it's quite pleasantly refreshing to see a apocalypse picture based on humans and the idea of humanity.)

i have no idea how to review this movie in english, and appreciating it requires some cultural sensibility related to the background, the language, the phrases in the script and the intertextual subtlety related to other genres of chinese cinema during 1970s. remember the first scene in quentin tarantino's kill bill, tarantino shows his homage to kung-fu movies by dubing the logo of hongkong's shaw studio in 1970s when kung-fu movies were sold to the other side of the world. but shaw studio made more than just kung-fu movies, and kung-fu movies have several scenarios derided from the ancient tales of our cultural history, not just a bunch of people wear ancient customs and fight like some half-witted retards.

there're several archetypes in the traditional archaic chinese pulps: revenge tales, kung-fu legends (the name kung-fu sucks. correctly the genre is called "tales of chivalrous justice" just like swashbucklers. kung-fu sounds stupid to me) then erotic urban legends like golden lotus, the first chinese realism literature which was written centuries ago before europe's renaissance. this movie mixes these three genres together and blends it with a lesbian twist. in figures of speech, imagine robin hood+ count monte cristo + marquis de sade = intimate confession of a chinese courtesan...ok, i have another thing to say: the translation sucks! the name aims at audience who would buy whatever shits in a chinese antic shop as long as it's dragon or buddha. the corret translation is slave of love, which is the meaning of the leading woman's name. (in our culture, each name has a deriative meaning.).

a young woman is robbed by a couple of rogues on the road, and she is sent to a brothel to be trained as a a prostitute (in ancient time, brothels hire professional gangsters to rob ill-fated females and force them to be prostitutes). but this woman refuses to conform. she receives severe abuses. but her untamed manners draw the covet from the brothel's female boss, who happens to be a lesbian dominatrix who takes pleasure in whipping others and licking their blood.

after a series of die-hard resistances and attempted suicides, this woman is guided by a male servant who works as a cleaner in the brothel, and he sacrifices his life at rescuing her. but she still cannot manage to escape. before the man dies, he requests her to swear that someday she will take revenge for him and herself and she will never waste her life away before that.

eventually she is still forcefully sent to be raped by several richest men in town. but now she chooses to conform. she becomes the lover of the brothel woman boss. she feigns intimacy with the boss in order to acquire all the martial tricks from the boss meanwhile she schemes on murdering every client who has ever violated her.

at last, she cripples and slaughters the woman who puts her into all these miseries (the brothel boss), but she also dies for giving in to her momentary mercy. she accpets the boss' demand of granting a last kiss. but lips are already smeared with poison. her name is love's slave and she dies for the remnant of love within her, even for her worst enemy. (did she love her just a little bit, or not? but she just dies of kissing her.)

ok, i try my best, it sounds awkward in english. "intimate confession of a chinese courtesan" sounds not so appetizing, i mean the name, come on, from the storyline, you could tell it's a swashbuckler avenger movie! even a lesbian/dominatrix version of swashbuckler avenger movie! courtesan my ass! fuck orientalism. real orient is so much cooler!

(ps) even the scenario sounds a little bit like porn, and you might be misled by the movie poster, which adapts some blatant sensationalism just to sell more tickets and copies, but you would never see the nudities you expect to see. yes, there're naked women, but they're all secondary. disaposable characters. as for the main stars, they're fully clothed. even it was 1970s, mainstream chinese cinema was still quite conservative and pedagogic.