British director David Mackenzie doesn't want you to know the plot of "Perfect Sense."
"I would like people to know it's going to be an emotional film and a romantic film," he said, in an overseas phone call as he rushed to an airport. "People ask me what it's about, and I tell them it's about the senses and about loss. It's about the human capacity to adapt, and what it is like being alive."
Mackenzie seemed annoyed that an interviewer would have read the film description in the Sundance Film Festival guide, and would have access to a few additional details. He politely refused to add to the sparse information available.
So here are the film guide details Mackenzie wishes people couldn't know:
The film stars Eve Green ("Casino Royale") as Susan, a epidemiologist recovering from a love affair gone bad.
At work, an emergency patient, a Glasgow truck driver, is brought in with sudden, uncontrollable fits of crying. Once calm, he loses his sense of smell. Susan learns there are 100 such cases in Great Britain, all new in the past 24 hours, and that additional cases have been reported around the world.
Susan has a chance encounter with Michael (Ewan McGregor), a chef, and they start to fall in love just as the world is beginning to change dramatically.
"I guess I wanted to tell a love story, but conventional stories are often being told," said Mackenzie, 44. "There's something very interesting in the way this story happens, the way the couple comes together and how they deal with it. It felt very out of the ordinary, very interesting. It's a love story for extreme times."
Mackenzie has had a film at Sundance once before, "Spread," starring Ashton Kutcher, in 2009. Work commitments kept Mackenzie from attending, so this will be his first Sundance trip.
"I am very much looking forward to it," he said. "I am intrigued to see how people react to the film. This will be the first time it is seen by more than 10 people, who are friends of the film. Obviously, I am a little bit nervous."
But the director has high hopes for Sundance, including drawing interest from film distributors.
"It's one of the high-profile films," Mackenzie said. "It's a good festival to release a film into the world. There are quite a lot of people there. It's a profile event, and I'm excited to have been asked. It's a great launching pad for the movie."
Mackenzie said he hopes Sundance audiences have an emotional reaction to his emotional film.
"I hope they hug their neighbors," he said.
So, why exactly -- and feel free to add details -- would they want to do that?
"They might feel they want to," Mackenzie said. "The idea of this film is a life-affirming thing."
• “Perfect Sense” (88 minutes, United Kingdom), 6:30 p.m. Thursday
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