Senses working overtime - actress Mary-Louise Parker - Brief Article

Mary-Louise Parker talks about her return to gay-inflected cinema in Jeremy Podeswa's evocative The Five Senses

"There's nobody really like Mary-Louise," says out Canadian writer-director Jeremy Podeswa of Mary-Louise Parker, one of the stars of his second feature, The Five Senses. "We tried to cast this role in Canada, and I found it difficult to find an actress who had the right combination of qualities: acerbic but at the same time vulnerable, sophisticated but kind of open, funny, and sad."

This study in contradictions is Rona, a cake decorator whose immaculately designed creations lack one crucial element: flavor. Her tasty romance with a hunky culinary whiz from Italy--a vacation fling who shows up on her doorstep--is one of five interwoven stories in Podeswa's film, each spun off one of the five senses. Two of the other threads: Rona's best friend, gay house cleaner Robert (Daniel MacIvor), believes his keen sense of smell will reveal whether his exes still love him, while a pair of teenagers explore the eroticism of looking and being looked at.

A sublime follow-up to Podeswa's 1994 feature-film debut, the sexy ensemble piece Eclipse, The Five Senses, opening July 14 from Fine Line, ultimately reminds us that there's more to love and life than just what meets the eye--or the ear, tongue, nose, and hand. To talk about the film and its lessons, The Advocate recently sat met with Parker in New York City's SoHo district. After the talk, Parker breezed off to midtown, where she's appearing in the critically acclaimed play Proof--an occasion that prompted The New York Times to call her "an actress who is nothing less than a director's dream." Clearly Five Senses director Podeswa would agree; he joined in the discussion from Toronto--reduced via speakerphone to just the sense of hearing.

What did you think when you first read the script, Mary-Louise?

Parker: I liked it right away, which is very rare for me. This was written so well that even stage directions were poetic and evocative. I thought, If he can write this stage direction, then certainly he can direct me.

Do you consider sexuality when accepting a role? You've certainly appeared in some provocative projects, like Fried Green Tomatoes, Boys on the Side, Longtime Companion ...

Parker: Longtime Companion is the only thing I think I've ever done that I did because of the subject matter. Everything else has been purely artistic, purely like "this part speaks to me." And I'm not afraid of certain things, so maybe that's why I've had controversial parts, or [parts with] dubious sexuality.

Where did these characters and situations come from, Jeremy? Like Rona and Roberto, her Italian lover who follows her back to the States.

Podeswa: I was in Australia, met somebody, and actually went back over there to resume the relationship. [Such a journey is] certainly an interesting point of departure for dramatic conflict. I've seen situations where things like this have resolved really well.

Parker: Where the other person doesn't speak the language that well?

Podeswa: I've even seen that. In fact, a guy here in Toronto got involved with an Italian guy, and when they met he didn't speak a word of English and the Canadian didn't speak Italian. And they've been together for seven or eight years now.

What about Robert, the gay house cleaner played by Daniel MacIvor?

Podeswa: I have a friend, David Roche, who's a performance artist-house cleaner. He's a brilliant guy, an amazing writer, good performer--and he cleans people's houses. I was always fascinated by the fact he's an artistic person who happens to have this job that takes him to people's homes and he snoops around and gets into their lives.

Robert also spends the film tracking down and sniffing his ex-lovers to see if any of them still love him. What does love smell like, anyway?

Podeswa: For me, it's one of these impossible quests. You either feel love or don't.

Parker: If you really, really love someone, then you completely love all of their smells. I never understood people who are squeamish with their lover's smells, unless they're really rank for that particular day or something. It's so interconnected, it's so part of them, so specific to them. I don't see how you cannot love that.

Speaking of love and the senses, how did the Italian taste?

Parker: I do lick the Italian [in the film]. He's a very clean man, sweet as can be.

To the tongue?

Parker: As a human being. I don't quite remember his flavor.

I'm a gay person on a Saturday night with $9.50 and two movies to choose between: a funny, fluffy gay romance like trick and a thoughtful, complex film--The Five Senses. Why would I pick your movie?

Podeswa: I do think there are specific things of interest for a gay audience in that there's a kind of openness and honesty in the representation in the film in terms of people's sexuality. There's a lot of fluidity. One of the main characters is previously bisexual, now more gay-identified. There are two kids who are exploring their sexuality in a very unusual way, and there's no sort of judgment about how they explore it.