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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Perfume was an unfilmable book, according to Stanley Kubrick. He was so very wrong that if he were alive today, he'd turn in his grave.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is European cinema at its best - unconvential, beautiful and genuinely captivating. Its slow and deliberate pace will put off some and the ending will lose others, but the more patient and forgivingly cultured among you will be in scented heaven. I enjoyed this film: I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: - loads of naked women, particularly at the end, but the bum-unfriendly running time counts against it here. To enjoy this film you should be: with your family.
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The Murderer of the title is Ben Whishaw, born in a less than fragrant fishmarket in pongy Paris during the peak of
pungent 18th century whiffiness. It just happens that this soggy little specimen has a supernaturally good sense of smell
and a somewhat
absent sense of morality, which unsurprisingly shapes his life somewhat. The importance of smell to the story is what
made it seem unfilmable but, thanks to some superb artistic direction, the odours are brilliantly conveyed, to the point
where you think you can actually smell the cocktail emanating from the screen - that's quite an achievement. Visual
effects are present, but they're those magical types that contribute to the movie without sticking out like a sore thumb
so I heartily approve, and the haunting score is perfect in its drama and unobtrusiveness. And there's plenty of nudity,
which always helps in my book.
Young Ben Whishaw does a superb job of bringing the troubled scent connoisseur to life with his asymmetric features and
winsome presence. It's half an hour before he utters his first word, but he conveys so much in his performance that it's
almost a disappointment when he does. It's an immense credit to both actor and director that we're made to feel
sympathetic towards a character who is, undoubtedly, a callous mass-murderer and, in fact, by the end we're in two minds
whether we want him to be caught or not. This sets up the ending nicely, which is very peculiar and completely
unexpected - in a lesser movie it would have been absurd, but Perfume just barely pulls it off thanks to the slightly
fairy-tale feel that has been created in earlier scenes, helped by the lightly comic parfumier Dustin Hoffman and the
sternly protective father Alan Rickman, both of whom add considerable substance.
