Movie Rewind Perfume: The Story of Murderer
September 13th 2007 09:10
Perfume: The Story of Murderer
A German/French/Spanish production directed by Tom Tykwer, this is an adaptation of the best-selling (over 15 million copies) novel of the same name, by Patrick Suskind.
Perfume tells the tale of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man lacking a personal odour, and born into 18th Century Paris under a table in a stinking fish market. Abandoned to lie among the rotting fish and rat carcasses by his mother, she is later hanged for attempting to hill him. He is given over to the ‘care’ of an orphanage, where the other children, sensing he is different from them, immediately try to smother him. His difference? Jean-Baptiste has a highly developed and obsessive olfactory sense. The film brilliantly captures his wonder and developing understanding of the world around him through scent, as he grows up in the orphanage and becomes indentured to a tannery-owner. Naturally, he is drawn to perfumery and begins to train under a has-been master perfumier, Guiseppe Baldini, played by Dustin Hoffman, and his obsession with finding a way to preserve aroma leads him to Gras, long-famous as the perfume centre of the world. Here, Jean-Baptiste begins his killing-spree in earnest, as he collects the ‘scent’ of his pure, young female victims. His nemesis is Richis, played by Alan Rickman, whose daughter Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood) will be the final ‘note’ in the perfume that Grenouille is creating.
All three cinemas were given over to this screening, and from the chatter in the foyer, many of the viewers had also read the book. I haven’t, so I can’t comment on how the movie works as an adaptation, but as a piece of film-making, its visually stunning, and the sense of period is amazing. The acting is profound, and the audience travels with Grenouille throughout his journey. You can almost experience the scents he inhales. A great performance from Ben Whishaw, who has minimal dialogue but maximum physical acting.
It’s certainly a strange story – a nondescript man with no sense of self, utterly amoral, and overlooked by everyone around him, who nevertheless has an obsession that leads to his notoriety and many deaths. I left with a heightened awareness of how we see ourselves compared with how others perceive us, and reflecting on how so often we scarcely bother to notice the people we interact with.
Words by Michele Clark
A German/French/Spanish production directed by Tom Tykwer, this is an adaptation of the best-selling (over 15 million copies) novel of the same name, by Patrick Suskind.
Perfume tells the tale of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man lacking a personal odour, and born into 18th Century Paris under a table in a stinking fish market. Abandoned to lie among the rotting fish and rat carcasses by his mother, she is later hanged for attempting to hill him. He is given over to the ‘care’ of an orphanage, where the other children, sensing he is different from them, immediately try to smother him. His difference? Jean-Baptiste has a highly developed and obsessive olfactory sense. The film brilliantly captures his wonder and developing understanding of the world around him through scent, as he grows up in the orphanage and becomes indentured to a tannery-owner. Naturally, he is drawn to perfumery and begins to train under a has-been master perfumier, Guiseppe Baldini, played by Dustin Hoffman, and his obsession with finding a way to preserve aroma leads him to Gras, long-famous as the perfume centre of the world. Here, Jean-Baptiste begins his killing-spree in earnest, as he collects the ‘scent’ of his pure, young female victims. His nemesis is Richis, played by Alan Rickman, whose daughter Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood) will be the final ‘note’ in the perfume that Grenouille is creating.
All three cinemas were given over to this screening, and from the chatter in the foyer, many of the viewers had also read the book. I haven’t, so I can’t comment on how the movie works as an adaptation, but as a piece of film-making, its visually stunning, and the sense of period is amazing. The acting is profound, and the audience travels with Grenouille throughout his journey. You can almost experience the scents he inhales. A great performance from Ben Whishaw, who has minimal dialogue but maximum physical acting.
It’s certainly a strange story – a nondescript man with no sense of self, utterly amoral, and overlooked by everyone around him, who nevertheless has an obsession that leads to his notoriety and many deaths. I left with a heightened awareness of how we see ourselves compared with how others perceive us, and reflecting on how so often we scarcely bother to notice the people we interact with.
Words by Michele Clark
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