Perfume: The Story of a Murderer Release Date: December 27, 2006 Starring: Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman, John Hurt, Alan Rickman, Rachel Hurd-Wood Directed by: Tom Tykwer
Because so many of this season's big-budget awards hopefuls come pre-programmed, you usually walk into the multiplex knowing exactly what kind of movie you're going to get. So there's always a certain twinge of excitement when you find yourself roughly thirty minutes into a prestige picture and realize you have no idea where it's going next. That's the case with Tom Tykwer's wonderfully unpredictable adaptation of Patrick Suskind's best-selling novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.
Originally published in 1985, the book has passed through the hands of a number of directors over the years, most notably the late Stanley Kubrick, who reportedly decided that it was unfilmable. It's certainly not an obvious candidate for a page-to-screen translation. The story of a young orphan boy in 18th century France with a superior sense of smell, Perfume is a sprawling period drama that regularly flirts with pitch-black comedy. In that way, it can be considered a descendent of Kubrick's own Barry Lyndon, which took a similarly wry approach to historical fiction. Tykwer even borrows that movie's mocking narrator, embodied here by John Hurt, who comments on the actions and thoughts of the central characters with barely concealed disdain.
Up-and-coming British actor Ben Whishaw plays the titular murderer, Jean-Baptise Grenouille. Unceremoniously born on the filthy cobblestones of an open-air market in Paris, Grenouille is abandoned by his mother and grows to manhood first in an overcrowded orphanage and then in a tanning factory. The lad possesses one thing that makes him extraordinary — his nose. Since childhood, Grenouille has had an almost supernatural ability to discern the precise components of even the most complex smells. This talent comes in handy when he encounters legendary perfumist Baldini (Dustin Hoffman) and wrangles a job as his assistant.
Grenouille's goal in working for Baldini is to master the art of preserving scent, specifically the scent of a red-haired woman he encountered in a Paris slum one evening and who became his first victim. When he feels he's mastered all that his master can teach him, he departs Paris for the town of Grasse, where he embarks on an ambitious plan to create the world's most intoxicating perfume. Accomplishing this, however, requires that he murder and "capture the scent" of 12 young women, including Laura Richis (Rachel Hurd-Wood) the daughter of one of Grasse's most prominent citizens (Alan Rickman).
With a budget that's rumored to be in the neighborhood of 50 million euros, Perfume is one of the most expensive European productions ever mounted. Every cent is there onscreen. The sets and costumes are exquisitely detailed and there are a number of large-scale set-pieces — most notably the jaw-dropping climax in which Grenouille finds an entirely unique way to save himself from public execution.
The film's spectacle, along with its wicked sense of humor, turns out to be the main source of its appeal. You definitely won't emerge from the theater raving about the cast. Aside from Hoffman's hilariously hammy turn, none of the other actors distinguish themselves, including Whishaw, whose performance primarily consists of him staring intently at the camera while flaring his nostrils. These are the kind of unavoidably ridiculous moments that most likely gave Kubrick pause when he was weighing whether or not to make the book into a film. Rather than run from it though, Tykwer was wise to embrace the story's inherent silliness; that silliness saves the audience from wondering whether or not he expects us to take everything in the film seriously. Perfume is sure to annoy as many moviegoers as it entertains, but at least even the naysayers would find it difficult to argue that film is nothing if not a departure from the ordinary.
