Oh, for the glory days of Smell-O-Vision! Tom Tykwer's latest film might benefit from such a gimmick. As it plays now, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a beautiful trinket whose charms lay entirely on its shiny surface.
The slam bang opening sequences raise the possibility that a dark fairy tale is about to unfold. A cheering crowd roars its bloodthirsty approval of a sadistic sentence handed down upon a beleaguered man. A narrator rewinds the story to the tumultuous birth of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in late 18th Century Paris.
His fishmonger mother pops out the infant in the midst of a busy marketplace, assumes he is as dead as her five previous stillborns, and resumes her work. Jean-Baptiste's lungs quickly fill with a wide assortment of malodorous smells -- illustrated by a dazzling explosion of images -- jump-starting his life and simultaneously creating deadly suspicion about his mother.
Jean-Baptiste grows up alone in an orphanage, surrounded by children unnerved by his olfactory prowess. Subsequently he's sold into indentured servitude. After he proves himself as a tireless worker, he is finally rewarded by being allowed to accompany his master on deliveries into the city. A fateful encounter with a beautiful fruit-seller (Karoline Herfurth) opens his eyes -- and nostrils -- to his destiny, as helpfully (sic) explained by the English title.
Up to this point, Jean-Baptiste has barely uttered a word. His extraordinary sense of smell, and the ways in which this affects his view of life, is expounded upon by narrator John Hurt, speaking in a gentle, wonder-filled voice. The filmmakers (notably director Tykwer, cinematographer Frank Griebe, and production designer Uli Hanisch) place Jean-Baptisete against a series of grim, dirty settings as he grows into adulthood. The tale sweeps along visually in a very satisfying fashion until perfume creator Giuseppe Baldini is introduced.
As embodied by Dustin Hoffman, employing a nasal 'Joisey' accent flattened in an odd way (perhaps by living on The Continent), Baldini is a greying expert living off the inventions of his youth. His interactions with Jean-Baptiste (played as an adult by Ben Whishaw) revitalize him, and he gladly serves as the young man's mentor. Baldini is certainly an enjoyable comic plot device, but the change in tone portends a free-for-all of genre styles to come.
Indeed, the film evinces a schizophrenic personality. The early going is related as a fairy tale grounded in the harsh realities of the period, but the Baldini sequence begins to distance the viewer from Jean-Baptiste. Considering the actions that he eventually undertakes, perhaps this was seen by the filmmakers as necessary (or perhaps they were being faithful to the source material, Das Parfum, a best-selling novel by Patrick Suskind first published in the mid-80s), but the net effect is that Jean-Baptiste's heinous acts take on an allegorical glow which renders the proceedings curiously uninvolving.
Dividing the story into digestible sections distinguished by different filmmaking styles (family drama featuring Alan Rickman as an overly-protective father; fast-paced television crime show focusing on the exciting search for a serial killer; lyrically-filmed magical medieval-Spencer Tunick group disrobing/love-in) makes Perfume easy to go down, but without much nourishment for the heart and soul.
It doesn't help that this particular fantasy has a faintly puzzling, somewhat troubling resolution that seems odd merely for the sake of oddity, or that, for a film set in and around Paris, it doesn't feel or sound very much like France. On balance, most of the 147-minute running time is entertaining. And many scenes look spectacular on the big screen. But it's hard to give an inoffensive picture with such potentially offensive elements a very strong recommendation.
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The book is amazing; the movie looks like a mess.
Nine more hours until I see it in the theatre and I'm VERY excited about this. Perhaps I'll pick the book up as well.
Overall it's a very good adaptation. They kind of messed up the ending by having Grenoile feel remorse but I guess I have to applaud them for the balls to keep the rest of the finale intact. Everyone who's read the book knows it's fucking outrageous.
I have to agree with the review. I just saw the film and was wildly disappointed. I haven't read the book, but the film dragged. The visuals, crowd scenes, and most of the production seemed bigger than the plot. I saw Children of Men, and Notes on a Scandal the same weekend, and Perfume was the worst of all three. Children of Men was the best. I had high hopes, and they were dashed.
I liked Tywer's HEAVEN quite a bit. But the man is still standing in the shadow of a giant (bigtime!), give the man balls for trying, but he's not even close. I think Kieslowski was just one-of-a-kind as a director....The First Chapter of Decalogue and "Red" deserve every superlative ever heaped on them.
Hmmm, now I want that Criterion "Double Life of Veronique"....
well, during reading one does create his own world in his imagination
and I must say the glossy look of the movie did not help me.
Apart from that women in the book are being described as incredibly good looking and are translated 100% like that to the screen.
but IMO the author meant that they only looked for grenouille that
way because of certain features others would not see in them. In
those times in paris no one was good looking in the classic sense.
they were all living in filth and especially upper class women
were extremly dirty and smelly. they just poured litres over litres
of perfume over them and poudered their faces all day long. I was
wishing for a much more drained and gritty look with only grenouilles phantasies and daydreams contrasted to that. all the
visual tricks are neat but not the meat of the story for me.
well, I certainly hoped that the german speaking movie industry will
for once get a "genre" movie right, but no, failed miserably or
they are now just in the same league with the other shitty costume
dramas of hollywood.
I'm all for departures if they make an adaptation a better movie
and stay faithful to the novel but this seemed to me like the
producer B.Eichinger told everybody: we need cool slo-mo effects,
gorgeous women with good makeup so we can create some stars for
germany and a dressman as actor since nobody wants to see a movie
with an perverse hunchback, at least not more than a few hundred.
Ah, and don't forget eyepopping colors, I demand that.
And what about the best part of the book. The Vision in the cave, he spends SEVEN YEARS THERE !!!!!
Then, the soundtrack. oh my god. berlin phiharmonic dullness.
some very good flashy jumpcuts and montages try to show the filth
and the beauty but I made up my mind already after the first 20mins
into the movie.
And this horrible commentator. Did you see "Adaptation", here it's
right: don't do a fkn voiceover (if u dont know why and how).
well and the ending: collective mechanical posing.
Don't get me wrong all of the above is of very high technical quality but everytime they leave the craziness and despair and dread
of the book and start to feed the mainstream the movie grinds to
a halt. I expected only brilliance of an adaptation of that book,
but all I got was "nice+competent".
*Phew*, that was some read. Hey, you may be right - but I was looking for a visual feast, and that’s what I got out of it. I enjoyed the book, very much indeed - but considering I only read it recently, it has not really sunk in as any sort of immediate classic for me. I can see you are truly a purist as regards this novel; I admire that.
As for the cave bit - do you really think they could have translated that to the screen without it looking daft? I know they touched on it (the novel is very fresh in my mind y'know), but again - I felt this was pretty forgivable considering the content they did manage to achieve. Sure the whole movie was bright, glossy, pretty, but once again I LIKED that. I read a review that said it looked like the actors were from a Calvin Klein commercial - agreed. I liked the storytelling side of it - the voice over lent an air of understanding to procedures, that would be difficult to translate into visuals or dialogue, considering the nature of the book.. but allowed it to flow. It certainly did not bother me..
Who knows? I'm not saying the flaws you saw did not exist - I just saw it differently. I just know that the whole, big, pretty extravaganza was pretty on the eyes & mind - and damned good viewing. Incidentally the friend I went (who lent me the book, and is a huge fan) was of the same opinion.
Well, there's your "unfilmable" novel. If anythings gonna divide people, that'll be it ; )
wow! what a movie!!!
loved every second of it.
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