Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Written by Andrew Birkin & Bernd Eichinger & Tom Tykwer
Directed by Tom Tykwer
DreamWorks/Paramount
2006
Rating:


An original and daring approach to monster and serial killer stories, "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" follows a man driven to kill because he's obsessed with capturing the scent of beauty.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is born into Dickensian circumstances: his mother births him in a fish market and, assuming him to be dead, abandons him; he's then passed through a series of abusive caretakers, each of whom meets a violent end, until Grenouille finds his calling making perfumes. Grenouille has an intense sense of smell that allows him to create majestic fragrances, and his passion in making them comes from his need to recapture the scent of the first beautiful woman he ever saw, a woman he promptly killed by accident. To recreate the smell of beauty and distill it into a perfume, Grenouille begins killing red-haired women and sets his sights on Laura Richis (Rachel Hurd-Wood) as the final note in his olfactory masterpiece.

Director Tom Tykwer ("Run Lola Run") miraculously adapts Patrick Sόskind's seemingly unfilmable 1985 novel, using his compulsive visual style to evoke aromas. Like the best monster movies, Grenouille is both villain and misunderstood victim, a man who commits grotesque acts while remaining sympathetic. Grenouille's need to create this perfume stems from his desire to know the smell of love and hopefully make others love him in return by wearing it.

Mainstream audiences may not flock to a movie that concludes with an orgy and complexly asks its viewers to root for a serial killer (making its release by major studios Paramount and DreamWorks all the more remarkable), but "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" deserves entry into the horror movie canon for possessing an uncanny ability to combine terror, moral repugnance and awe.

Posted Monday, January 22, 2007

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/perfume.story.of.murderer