Born in a Parisian fish-market, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is gifted with the most phenomenal sense of smell, but without a scent of his own. Sold into slavery, his talents bring him to the attention of a prominent perfumer, who grows rich on his protégé’s amazing abilities. But Grenouille is obsessed with capturing the essence of beauty in a scent. This leads him to the Provençale city of Grasse where he learns the perfumer’s art and commits a series of hideous murders in his quest to bottle the aroma of beautiful women.

Despite the mishandling of the central conceit, this is a very good-looking film. If it was simply a period drama, the visuals alone would carry it. From the teeming fish market where Grenouille is born to the dark alleyways and corners of Paris and the genteel houses of Grasse, every frame is packed with period detail. In fact the fish market is so well rendered that you can practically smell the putrescence. The set-dressers art is most ably displayed in Baldini’s perfume shop and workshop, which are both cluttered with every conceivable artefact required to capture aromas. The costume design is also exquisite, from the simplicity of Grenouille’s grubby, roughly woven rags to the intricate embroidery and beading of Laura’s opulent gowns. Tykwer deftly illustrates the yawning gap between rich and poor with his uses of colour, relying heavily on a palette of browns and greys for the areas where the poor congregate in Paris and a much wider, brighter, warmer palette for the rich people’s houses in Grasse. But for all its good looks, the film doesn’t work. It simply can’t get past having an unsympathetic lead. This makes for a visually arresting, but deeply unsatisfying hundred and forty-seven minute running time.

As Grenouille, young British actor Ben Whishaw gives a phenomenally intense performance. It takes a lot of courage to play such an unlikeable character, but Whishaw rises to the occasion. Despite the character being almost silent, you can see the cogs whirring behind his eyes at all times, giving him an almost animal watchfulness. There’s also a certain childlike innocence about him because of his wide-eyed incomprehension of human interaction. But it is always clear that he is strange, with Whishaw underlining the innate difference of the character through his unwillingness to interact rather than observe. He is obviously seriously disturbed, but Whishaw doesn’t judge him or impose his own morality on the part.

“Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” is a brave but ultimately foolhardy endeavour by Tom Tywker. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are limits to what cinema can convey and that there truly are some unfilmable stories, this being one of them. It looks very pretty and you get the gist of what the director is trying to make you experience. But despite a remarkably intense performance by the lead, there is nothing that can rescue the film from its own sense of self-importance. It wants to be seen as great art, but without a hero of some description, the audience has little to cling to, leaving this a visually lush but emotionally sterile exercise in filmmaking. Until smell-o-vision is widely available, the realm of odour is one you won’t experience in your local multiplex (unless you have the misfortune of sitting next to someone who smells).