In the two decades following the publication of German author, Patrick Suskind’s, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, filmmakers lobbied to acquire the rights to turn the international (it’s even published in Latin) best-seller into a motion picture, but only one thing stood in their way; Suskind, himself. The writer, much like the book’s fans, couldn’t imagine anyone doing justice to his novel, and resisted both cash and the pitches of a bevy of talented filmmakers, with names like Scorcese, Foreman, and Kubrick amongst them. In 2001, Suskind finally relented, and sold the rights to the novel (for 10 million Euros),, with fellow German, Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola, Run) ultimately entrusted with bringing the once-thought “unfilmable” book to the screen.
Perfume tells the story of a Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), a young man born with a tremendously potent sense of smell. As a boy, Jean-Baptiste finds himself experiencing life through its many scents, cataloging odors in his mind, with an uncanny ability to identify and recreate even the most complex of aromas. His first encounter with a young woman sends Jean-Baptiste into olfactory overload, resulting in the accidental death of the girl, and triggering a desire to recreate that smell in such a way as it can be enjoyed for all eternity. Jean-Baptiste seeks out the aid of a once-legendary perfume maker, Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman), and promises to reward the man with a collection of the finest perfumes ever created if Baldini shares with him the secrets of capturing scents. Unaware of his young protégés ultimate desire, Baldini shows him how he goes about creating the essential oils used in making his perfumes, but, when it becomes apparent that the old perfume maker’s methods aren’t advanced enough for Jean-Baptiste’s rather unique needs, Baldini sends him off to a small country village where he had long-ago honed his craft. It is here that Jean-Baptiste learns the methods needed for capturing the scent of a woman, and begins his murderous quest to fabricate the ultimate perfume.
As someone who hasn’t read the novel, I knew very little about Perfume going into it. I’d seen photos of people in powdered wigs and expected some sort of Merchant/Ivory murder mystery, but was instead greeted by a grotesque, disturbing, and oftentimes quite funny film that, to me, is best summed up as Grimm’s Fairy Tales meets Hannibal Lecter. From the film’s stomach churning opening sequences (in which Jean-Baptiste’s mother delivers her son, literally letting the infant fall between her legs and into the mud beneath her feet whilst still manning her station at the fish stand she works at), to the gorgeously realized finale, in which Jean-Baptiste’s labor of love makes its heady debut, Perfume is a bountiful feast of images so vibrant that, yes, you can almost smell them.
The DVD from Paramount offers only a short making-of featurette in terms of extras, but seeing as how this is (as of this writing) the most expensive German film ever made, I’d be surprised if more extras weren’t waiting in the wings for a special edition further down the road. Still, even if your totally obsessed with getting only the most extras-packed versions of every film you own, don’t waste a second longer than reading this review before at least adding this one to your Netflix queue, as Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a deliriously entertaining and jaw-droppingly beautiful (in an ugly as all get out sort of way) pitch black fairy tale of a film, and one of the finest I’ve seen this year.
