Director David Tykwer takes on something that can’t easily be translated onto film – scent. He also does a good job at putting a book onto film that no less than Stanley Kubrick called unfilmable.
What the back of the box says:
But when first aroused by a young woman's scent, his desire to forever capture her essence quickly mutates into a dark and deadly erotic compulsion. The terror and tension mount with each beautiful victim in this spellbinding tale that culminates in a finale as unexpected as it is unforgettable.”
I watched a show about dogs that sniffed out mold in houses. The trainer described a dog’s sense of smell as followed. She said that when a human goes into a room and there’s chocolate cake, they smell the cake. A dog enters the room and they smell the eggs, flour, and other ingredients of the cake. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is born with an enhanced sense of smell. He’s born in a fish market to a female fishmonger who just dumps him under her stall thinking that he’s another stillborn.
However, when he breathes in his first scents and cries he seals his mother’s fate since the customer at the stall thinks that she’s trying to kill her baby. This is the first victim of Grenouille’s streak of bad luck for those that are around him. He’s sent to the orphanage and the other children attempt to smother him since they sense his alien nature. As an adult he ends up working for an aging perfume maker, Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman).
There he becomes obsessed with capturing and preserving scent. Unfortunately, he becomes obsessed with capturing the scent of a female. This obsession will lead to Grenouille becoming the equivalent of a serial killer as he perfects the methods of preserving the scents of others since he has no scent of his own.
Perfume is based on Peter Suskind’s 1985 novel that Stanley Kubrick called unfilmable. I think that director Tykwer does a good job at filming the unfilmable. It can’t be an easy task to bring any novel to the screen and especially one that has to do with a sense of smell (which really can’t be easy to make into a novel either).
He has a fine cast; Whishaw is grand as the title character even though the character is not exactly a likeable one. Dustin Hoffman has a grand time as the aging perfumer who has seen better days. Alan Rickman is also a standout as the concerned father whose daughter (Rachel Hurd-Wood) is part of Grenouille’s twisted plan. There’s also son great narration by John Hurt.
Tykwer and his team do a find job in attempting to put scent on screen with visuals that show the stinking conditions of France at the time. They even do an interesting job of relaying the good smells; witness the time that Baldini inhales Grenouille’s first perfume creation. What might turn some off is that the ending is interpretive and not as straightforward as audiences might want.
Perfume is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include the 13 minute “The Story of Perfume” which interviews director/screenwriter/composer Tykwer, producer/screenwriter Bernd Eichinger, Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman, Rachel Hurd-Wood, screenwriter Andrew Birkin, production designer Uli Hanisch, costume designer Pierre-Yves Gayraud, and director of photography Frank Griebe.
Perfume is a fine film and I thought that it dealt with an intriguing story, fine acting, and putting something on screen that is not easy to imagine. That being said, it may be an acquired taste in those same respects and especially with the way the film ends.
Judging from some comments, those that liked the book may not enjoy the film but the individual will have to be the judge of that. I thought it was a compelling and interesting film.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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