Reviewed by Katherine Ramsland

When the novel on which this film is based was published in 1985, it won a number of awards and made quite a literary splash. In part that was because author Patrick Süskind had woven the most original olfactory metaphors ever invented into a monstrous tale about a vampire-serial killer hybrid. This unique historical horror novel featured the emotional seduction of scent, as embodied in a strange creature who swooned over aromatic perfection even as he repeatedly violated its source. But that wasn't all. His ambitions, his methods, and his fate all held rare surprises. For a singular reading experience, it was not to be missed.

advertisement

The film captures the story well, closely following the original plot, as the main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) grows into a vague mélange of both attractive and repulsive qualities. In whatever manner readers of the novel may have pictured Grenouille, the actor's compelling performance will make them forget it, because Whishaw "gets" the character. In addition, a continuous voiceover (John Hurt) makes the whole thing feel like a dark fairy tale.

Tom Tykwer directed the lavish film, which captures a detailed sense of eighteenth-century France — especially the grit and grime of the lower classes. This is where Grenouille gets his start, as his prostitute mother expels him and then tries to kill him. He's fortuitously rescued while she's caught and executed. In fact, magically, most people this vampiric protagonist encounters as he moves from one situation to another end up dead.

Ben Whishaw

Grenouille lacks a scent of his own, which repulses his nursemaids, and he thus becomes obsessed with the odor that others emit — especially young women. He kills a girl to acquire the fragrance he sniffs on her skin, but finds that as she decomposes it evaporates. He forms a plan to capture this scent on a permanent basis, and because he's honed his sense of smell to such an exquisite point, he's accepted as an apprentice to a famous master perfumer, Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman). For Baldini, Grenouille creates powerful new perfumes, making the man wealthy. But these fragrances fall short of what Grenouille himself desires and when Baldini tells him of a secret extraction process used in another town, he moves on.

Rachel Hurd Wood

Soon he sees the most beautiful girl in Grasse (Rachel Hurd-Wood) and she happens to give off the very scent he's been seeking all his life. He learns the secret extraction method and experiments first with other girls, killing them, but Grenouille is indifferent to the pain he causes. By this point, he's been so ill-used by others over the course of his life — even in this town - that he's developed an aversion to the human race. He now seeks power over them.

He believes that the perfume he could create from the body of the girl of his dreams would make all people adore him. However, the girl has a wealthy father (Alan Rickman), who suspects the nature of Grenouille's fatal attraction. From that moment, the story builds toward a truly memorable scene, and the film's climax, while shockingly gruesome, is a perfectly logical dénouement. It, too, is quite memorable.

Perfume DVD

Visually extravagant from start to finish, the movie is disquieting and even disgusting. It presents one of the most extraordinary serial killers ever created, surpassing even Hannibal Lecter, so no fan of this genre should miss it. Even so, it will take a special kind of appreciation to recognize the filmmaker's accomplishment. Perhaps not surprising, Perfume was a resounding success in Europe but America distributors sent it to limited venues. At least it's now available in DVD.

By Katherine Ramsland

For More Daily Crime News