Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

 

 

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How exactly do you make a movie about smells? After all, a movie is all about sight and sound. Touch, taste and smell rarely come into it.

But acclaimed German director Tom Tykwer manages to make us smell things, in his most disturbing movie to date, "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer." This time around, the talented Tykwer abandons his usual lovers-against-the-world stories for a lushly-filmed, darkly comic story of olfactory obsession. Yes, that is what I said.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouillle (Ben Whishaw) is a man with a brilliant sense of smell, and zero body odor. He was born in a putrid fishmarket, raised in an orphanage, and later escapes from a tannery where he was working. He's enraptured by the many thrilling smells in the city -- he even kills a young girl, so that he can smell her lovely scent.

In his search for the perfect scent, Jean-Baptiste gets a job with a once-famed perfume-maker (Dustin Hoffman). But after learning that not everything has a scent, he begins killing women to try to distill their scents into the ultimate perfume -- with beautiful redhead Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood) as the "thirteenth scent." But his ultimate scent has an even more sinister side, as his scents begin to affect the population in unusual ways.

"Perfume" is Tykwer's most unique movie to date, and the one that definitely identifies him as a cinematic master. There are lots of music that are evocative, sensual, colourfully beautiful, or unspeakably creepy, but not many manage to be all of them. "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" is all of those, and more.

Obviously a movie doesn't smell like anything, except maybe stale popcorn. So Tykwer uses sight for smell -- rotted fish, maggots, moldy walls from the late 1700s to show Jean-Baptiste's miserable origins. And he uses sparkling colour and windblown trees for nicer scents. Colour takes the place of scent itself -- bright red Lola hair on multiple girls, flowers that seem to pop out of the screen, fresh leaves, brilliant fruits, even brightly coloured food. It gives the visuals a fairy-tale vibrancy.

In fact, the scripting almost comes second to the exquisite cinematography. Yet Tykwer is able to bring across the powerful symbolism that brings the movie to life -- the smells are symbolic of love itself, which the scentless and amoral Jean-Baptiste does not have. He can only try to take it from others, with a finale that is the very image of poetic justice.

Jean-Baptiste himself is one of those love/hate characters, and Whishaw does an excellent job with his sort of half-crazy, intent stare. And there are some great supporting performances by Alan Rickman as Antoine Richis (Laura's dad) and Hoffman as the eccentric old perfume-maker -- he adds a welcome note of comedy.

A movie is dependent on sight, but Tom Tykwer creates a movie that you can almost smell. "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" is darkly comic, bizarrely beautiful movie, and definitely worth seeing.

"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" is one of those films that begins pretty much at the start of the end. Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is beaten and dragged from his prison cell to hear the sentence of the court, which seems to have a viciousness usually reserved for regicides. This beginning makes it clear that the murderer whose story this is will be caught. Such a statement is true, but it is also inaccurate when it comes to capturing the nature of this 2006 film directed by Tom Tykwer ("Heaven") based on the novel by Patrick Süskind. Ultimately, I found myself thinking that this story is a fable.

The history of perfume begins in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, with the name of a perfume maker appearing on a second millennium cuneiform tablet. In the 18th century France became the center of the European perfume trade when aromatic plants grown in the Grasse region provided the raw materials for the flourishing industry. However, Süskind's novel finds the motivation for perfume in the muck and mire that was the streets of Paris three centuries ago and even without the use of scratch-and-sniff stickers Tykwer's movie gives a sense that the city is one giant cesspool where perfumes are a necessary way of covering the smells. Grenouille is literally born in the muck and manages to survive, growing up to evince two remarkable traits: Not only does he posses the most acute sense of smell on the planet but also has absolutely no scent of his own.

Grenouille's unique talent leads to a peculiar obsession when he encounters two people. One is a girl (Karoline Herfurth) who sells plums on those streets of Paris and the other is Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman), a master perfumer who has fallen out of favor and now resorts to trying to copy the successful perfumes of his competitors. Grenouille wants to preserve the smell of the plum girl and it is in the service of that obsession that he becomes a murderer. Baldini agrees to mentor the young tanner in exchange for marvelous new perfumes, but the old master does not have the secret that drives Grenouille and in parting Baldini tells the young man to head to Grasse, the center of the world for the art of perfuming. However, once there what catches Grenouille's attention are not the plants of the region but the young women of Grasse, especially the beautiful Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood), daughter of Antoine Richis (Alan Rickman), a wealthy and well-respected citizen of the town.

John Hurt's narration is a major part of the film since Grenouille is a man of very few words who spends most of his time sniffing the air and inhaling deeply the scents that catch his attention. The narration is also needed to ensure the audience catches the attendant ironies of the story's conclusion. It is Hurt's tone as much as his words that confirm my idea that this story is a fable. Except for the layers of irony at the end I might be tempted to call "Perfume" a parable, but the uniqueness of both Grenouille's character and his story are such that it cannot be extrapolated to the audience in any meaningful way. There is no catharsis to be found here and none is intended, but "Perfume" is very much in the tradition of the tragic heroes of ancient Greece where the Fates often dictated an ironic demise. As such, it will not be to everybody's taste, but then that is not the primary sense at play in this partiucular tale.

Orphan, Jean Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) develops a special olfactory sense. After working in a tannery, he discovers the city and meets a girl that inebriates his senses. He then realizes that he has a destiny. He soon meets perfume-maker Baldini (Dustin Hoffman) and will reproduce perfumes for him. However, his work will take a dark turn as his search deepens for the ultimate scent.

While the book is very vivid and calls for the reader's imagination regarding the smells, and accurately describes the olfactory senses and odors one might encounter, the film obviously lacks this reproduction. (It *is* difficult to transfer odor on film! so this was to be expected.) Also, the book was more shocking than the movie probably because of the strong description of smells, and violent details.

That said, the film is nevertheless watchable, despite Hoffman's terrible overacting interpretation. Whishaw is a good casting choice as Grenouille, he is well directed and is not too much a "pretty boy" for the part.

The costumes, the period details, the images, the music - they do help in experiencing atmosphere, but it still rather limited because of the lack of correct interpretation or transcription of smells to the screen.

Worth watching once. For the sheer beauty of the photography work.

NOTE: I still recommend reading the book, whether before or after the film that is your choice. But read the book. A totally different experience.

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4.0 out of 5 stars "I just needed her."
The year is 1766, and Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is born amid the filth of a Paris slum with an unusually well-developed sense of smell. Read more

Published 22 months ago by Kona

5.0 out of 5 stars A Creepy Movie
This has become part of our annual Halloween assortment. My husband and I saw the trailer on another odd movie we came across, but we thought it looked so unusual we just had to... Read more

Published on Dec 8 2009 by A. M. Metner

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful
A simply beautiful film. Existentialists will love it, as well as those who hunger for a story told from a unique perspective. Read more

Published on Jun 12 2009 by L. Affleck

3.0 out of 5 stars An odd movie
Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer was an extremely odd movie that I do not even know what rating to give. Read more

Published on Nov 15 2008 by S

4.0 out of 5 stars [3.5]--Good Film but something smells a bit off
There is such a fascination in adapting famous books to the cinema language, for both filmmakers and film-viewers, especially if the book is a famous best seller one. Read more

Published on Aug 28 2007 by Jenny J.J.I.

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