Fine Line Features | The Five Senses

If an event is meant to matter emotionally, symbolically or mystically, food will be close at hand to sanctify and bind it.

Taste More

"Rona is all about appearance, but the substance behind what she does in life is lacking....She never goes past a certain level - with her cakes or her relationships." --Mary-Louise Parker on Rona

Taste is another of the great sensual pleasures, so adored by human beings we have made satisfying the taste-buds a form of art and entertainment, with four-star restaurants and cookbooks by the score. In THE FIVE SENSES, Mary-Louise Parker stars as Rona, a young cake baker in Toronto who suffers from a poor sense of taste not only in her angel food layers but in her love life as well. Believing her cakes need only look good rather than taste good, she never truly invests herself with passion. But now, her latest Italian lover is trying to get her to try new sensations both in her work and her romance.

Rona, like all human beings, has a unique palate. In fact, no two human beings ever taste cake exactly the same way. As it turns out, each person's saliva is chemically distinct, and each tongue has its own geography. Some people are more sensitive to salt, others to sugar. That's why one man's delight is sometimes another man's poison. However, certain tastes are known to have specific physiological and psychological effects; for example, the aphrodisiac effects of a taste of honey or chocolate are legendary. Taste is so individual that the very word has two meanings: referring not only to food and drink but also to one's desires and predilections in art, design and all things that stir the soul.

Mary-Louise Parker saw her character's quandaries about taste as signs of a deeper struggle. "Rona is all about appearance, but the substance behind what she does in life in lacking," explains the actress. "She never goes past a certain level - the frosting level - with her cakes or her relationships. Through Roberto, she begins to realize that intensity can be a good thing, even though it scares her."

Parker was delighted to be part of a story that breaks the mold. "This script was different from anything I'd ever read," she comments. "Although the scope of the story is small, on a human level, it's huge."