New food movie described as 'foodpocalyptic'

(2011 YouTube, LLC)

The latest kitchen film to be creating a stir stars Ewan McGregor as a high-end chef in a movie that marries seemingly incongruous genres and topics into one: food, love, horror, science fiction and the Apocalypse.

Or, as Bon Appetit magazine calls it, a "Foodpocalyptic romance drama."

Perfect Sense centers around the sensuous love affair between Michael (McGregor), a talented chef at a fine dining restaurant, and Susan, an epidemiologist played by Eva Green frantically searching for answers as a worldwide epidemic is poised to break out.

One by one, people around the world fall victim to a strange phenomenon which strips them of their senses - smell, taste - and induces intense, uncontrollable emotional breakdowns.

To prepare for his role, McGregor visited a Glasgow kitchen thinking he could get away with standing idly by and watching the kitchen in action.

Instead, the chef put him on the line.

"I went along thinking maybe I could get away with sitting in the kitchen for a couple of hours watching people peel potatoes," he said in an interview with The Scotsman this week. "But the guy running the place thought otherwise, and I spent a couple of days and nights doing steak tartare with raw egg on it. Don't ask me to cook anything though."

Making one of the lead characters a chef is a conspicuous choice to highlight the intense, intimate connection between the senses, memories and experiences.

Coincidentally, a chef's memoir documenting her loss of smell following a serious car accident was released this month called Season to Taste. Molly Birnbaum chronicles her recovery as she visits flavor labs, dines at Grant Achatz's legendary restaurant and enrolls at a perfume school in the south of France.

Meanwhile, a culinary movie of an entirely different kind, The Trip, also premiered in US theaters last week featuring two of England's favorite comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. The comedy follows the duo as they take a culinary road trip along northern England sampling Michelin-starred restaurants and breaking out into celebrity impersonations.

Perfect Sense screens at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this weekend.

To watch the trailer, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWOlvyz_c2M .