Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (18.)
Directed by Tom Tykwer.
Starring Ben Whishaw, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Alan Rickman, Dustin Hoffman. 147 mins.
Perfume is a film people have difficulty deciding on, the kind of film where in the auditorium afterwards you’ll hear people asking, “I’m not sure, what did you think of it?” It’s some kind of something, but is it actually any good?
The movie is taken from Patrick Susskind’s acclaimed best seller about a serial killer who kills women as part of his quest for the perfect smell. It is a notoriously unfilmable read as it centres on lengthy descriptions of smells. Born in absolute poverty in an 18th century Parisian fish market, Grenoble has an extraordinary sense of smell. He survives a savage upbringing to become a perfumier under the apprenticeship of Baldini (Hoffman) and starts to murder women in an obsessive quest to capture their scents.
I’m told the glory of the novel is that it’s simultaneously beautiful and ugly and for the first ten extraordinary minutes Tykwer (Run Lola Run) captures that in the scenes of Grenoble’s birth in a Paris fish market in 1738 but can't keep up that level of wonder. There are some stunning visual set pieces, but between them it often has a bog standard period drama look.
Given that the plot often calls on them to do outlandish things that could easily leave them looking stupid, the actors cope very well. In the lead, young British actor Winshaw is almost like something from the silent age while Rickman is restrained and very effective as a father trying to protect his daughter. Hoffman seems to be having fun, though I’m not sure he directed the full force of his talent to this project – there’s surely more to playing Italian than saying “Mamma mia” occasionally.
In the first half Tykwer’s strategy for dealing with the unfilmable book relies heavily on a John Hurt voiceover that is reminiscent of his 80’s “Don’t Die of Ignorance,” work on the government’s AIDS campaign. A voiceover often feels like a cop out but for a prose style as densely descriptive as Susskind’s it may be the only choice.
Halfway through though Hurt is dropped and there is an abrupt change of pace as if Tykwer had been tapped on the shoulder and told to get a move on. The film seems to be building up to the murders but when they come they are rattled through at an almost indecent pace. The film though has a striking finale, a deliriously outlandish sequence the like of which has not been seen since Ken Russell’s The Devils in the early seventies. It’s the kind of thing that will earn hoots of derision if the audience don’t trust the film but for me they pull it off.
Directed by Tom Tykwer.
Starring Ben Whishaw, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Alan Rickman, Dustin Hoffman. 147 mins.
Perfume is a film people have difficulty deciding on, the kind of film where in the auditorium afterwards you’ll hear people asking, “I’m not sure, what did you think of it?” It’s some kind of something, but is it actually any good?
The movie is taken from Patrick Susskind’s acclaimed best seller about a serial killer who kills women as part of his quest for the perfect smell. It is a notoriously unfilmable read as it centres on lengthy descriptions of smells. Born in absolute poverty in an 18th century Parisian fish market, Grenoble has an extraordinary sense of smell. He survives a savage upbringing to become a perfumier under the apprenticeship of Baldini (Hoffman) and starts to murder women in an obsessive quest to capture their scents.
I’m told the glory of the novel is that it’s simultaneously beautiful and ugly and for the first ten extraordinary minutes Tykwer (Run Lola Run) captures that in the scenes of Grenoble’s birth in a Paris fish market in 1738 but can't keep up that level of wonder. There are some stunning visual set pieces, but between them it often has a bog standard period drama look.
Given that the plot often calls on them to do outlandish things that could easily leave them looking stupid, the actors cope very well. In the lead, young British actor Winshaw is almost like something from the silent age while Rickman is restrained and very effective as a father trying to protect his daughter. Hoffman seems to be having fun, though I’m not sure he directed the full force of his talent to this project – there’s surely more to playing Italian than saying “Mamma mia” occasionally.
In the first half Tykwer’s strategy for dealing with the unfilmable book relies heavily on a John Hurt voiceover that is reminiscent of his 80’s “Don’t Die of Ignorance,” work on the government’s AIDS campaign. A voiceover often feels like a cop out but for a prose style as densely descriptive as Susskind’s it may be the only choice.
Halfway through though Hurt is dropped and there is an abrupt change of pace as if Tykwer had been tapped on the shoulder and told to get a move on. The film seems to be building up to the murders but when they come they are rattled through at an almost indecent pace. The film though has a striking finale, a deliriously outlandish sequence the like of which has not been seen since Ken Russell’s The Devils in the early seventies. It’s the kind of thing that will earn hoots of derision if the audience don’t trust the film but for me they pull it off.
