Perfume: The Story of a Murderer Review
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.
LINKS
ScreenAnarchy - Michael Guillen's interview with Tom Tykwer)
ScreenAnarchy - Michael Guillen's notes on Q&A with Tom Tykwer)
