What a strange hypothetical it is to wonder which of your senses you could most easily part with. Certainly, no one who ever lost one would think to ask such a thing. Perfect Sense is sci-fi of just that apocolyptic kind, envisioning what might remain of our humanity when we are stripped, piecemeal, of all that makes us human.

In many such films, there goes a rarely unspoken assumption that were we to fail, all would be lost. Any delay in an about-turn of corporate excess would surely herald some ruinous brand of climate change, with its crashing waves and end-of-world prophecies. We’re led to believe that if Bruce Willis and Steven Tyler were unable to blast that damn asteroid from its orbit, life would simply have ceased to be. Disaster movies exist in a black and white world, for it serves their purposes well.

Despite its depicting a worldwide epidemic, Perfect Sense confines itself almost entirely to a single street in Glasgow, onto which Michael (Ewan McGregor), a chef, steps for his cigarette breaks. Susan (Eva Green) lives in the flat above. She works as an epidemiologist, whom other films might have put to use in a race to find a cure. Not here. What we have instead is human resilience in the face of inevitability. If Contagion was a story of how disaster was averted at the last, then Perfect Sense is what happened when it was not.

The disease has no name, either because no one is investigating it, or they’ve already done so and saw little point in continuing. What matters is that it affects everyone, everywhere, and slowly robs them of their senses. First comes smell, whose absence we reason has its upsides. Restaurants ably make up the difference by over seasoning their food. Then comes taste itself, for which there is no such relief. A food critic takes to describing his plates in terms of temperature and texture, which is rather akin to a movie critic being reduced to explaining the workings of the projector booth.

As go the senses, so too the mind. Routines are interrupted by slovenly carnal desires, in which formally civilised co-workers tear into flesh and vats of oil with equal abandon. Sometimes, they appear as if enveloped by a black cloud, their tears seemingly abundant and without end. When they necessarily revert to their former selves, there is a collective moment of realisation. Strangers gaze at one another, at their stained clothes and sodden faces, suddenly appalled at what has become.

Michael and Susan huddle together, their romance trapped amidst a fracturing sea. They continue to meet, even as debris litters the street and quarantine orders go up. Their relationship is frequently seen to bow and bend, as if breaking, only to blossom once more. They are not billed names, isolated from the prevailing winds – their fate is that of everyone else. There are no approaching tidal waves, or imminent invasions; no cataclysmic event to make or ruin. The future of Perfect Sense is one in which we simply continue, ever-more disabled, redefining humanity as we must.