The cast of the film include main actor Ben Whishaw who has starred in recent films such as Bright star, Brideshead Revisited. He dominates proceedings in this film. Not one of Dustin Hoffman's best roles playing Baldini who is the perfumer.
Plot Outline
as stated on imdb website 'Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born with a superior olfactory sense, creates the world's finest perfume. His work, however, takes a dark turn as he searches for the ultimate scent'.An introduction scene is shown in a dungeon type prison where a male prisoner is taken and dragged by chains, publically humiliated and sentenced to punishment via a wooden beating and iron rods. The reason behind this is that at the end of the movie the same guy is in imaging himself as being sentenced and potentially going to die.
The opening scene describes the rest of the film well in that during the 18th century a 5th born child Jean Grenouille was born into a fish market arena. The general living conditions shown here are one based on squalid conditions, rats, vermin, and other plague and disease type possibilities.
The main feature of the plot is Jean's sense of smell. He is able to smell anything. Good or bad, he knows all the smells. He is in search of finding and making the ultimate scent smell. The storyline from start to finish surrounds this unique personal characteristic.
The kid is cruelly abandoned, where he is then bought by a slave trader and sold on to another.
Once a young adult Jean, then makes a super potion which is derived by killing about half a dozen young women for this purpose. The end result is Jean is arrested. Jean's saving grace before his sentencing is that his potion is released upon the the watching crowd, which leads to a public love orgy.
Regarding the end of the film your going to have to watch this yourself as i refuse to give any more plot details away.
Extra Information
The soundtrack is by the artists Berliner Philharmoniker & Sir Simon Rattle. You can try searching Perfume-Distlilled on itunes or at a music source of you choice. The soundtrack is a good quality classical style track.
The film is based on the descriptive book novel by Suskind.
The film lasts about 2 hours 12 minutes. In terms of films this is getting closer to Ben Hurr. Though it is in a positive way entertaining to watch. I would expect that i would view this on a repeated basis. Having said this i did find myself feeling slightly bored after half an hour, and did minutes later continue to watch the rest of the DVD.
The film repeats Jean Groulliers obsession with fragrances and smells that makes the plot weak. The aspect that spoils the film for me is the nature of the murdering and images of murdered women.
Its appaling to see, and it is not a film for the fainthearted. The film is given an R rating suitable only for adults.
The quality of the acting was very standard, some of the scenes where a cat was almost pulled out of nowhere by one of the lead actors almost gave me a heart attack watching it. The use of animals, horses, rats, dogs was interesting to see, no major special effects used or anything extraordinary. So again a slightly lower rating for the film here.
The narrations were a bit off putting in so far as it described the events instead of allowing the viewer to learn to understand the film from the beginning, it left nothing mysterious and no cliffhangers. It gave the film away from the start.
As a comparison i would have no idea as to which other films are similar in terms of storyline.
On the 3 disc DVD version there is the main film, an interview with the cast and crew and also the 'making of the film'. All in all its not worth buying, maybe ok for renting for a day no problem.
Recommended for people that like watching interesting, something new, strange,or weird films. Not for normal people. My rating 5-6/10
![Perfume - The Story Of A Murderer [DVD] [2006]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78097360.jpg)
22.03.2008 23:11
You forgot to review the film! It's still helpful what's here though. Elle x
13.03.2008 21:02
An interesting review. It certainly seems like a strange film.
11.03.2008 12:33
i have much the same opinion as you on this film. its original yeah...but it good do with some work.