Rene Rodriguez
Miami Herald
Published: Friday, January 5, 2007


Out of all the sensations movies can convey, smell is not high atop the list: Aside from John Waters' 1981 trash-epic Polyester, which came accompanied by a handy scratch-and-sniff card to be used when a particular number flashed on the screen, I can't think of another movie that was as fixated on fragrance as Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

In adapting Patrick Suskind's wildly popular novel, about a serial killer named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille with a supernaturally refined sense of smell, director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Heaven) has to make do without Waters' inventive solution. This can seem like a blessing in certain scenes, like the depiction of the hero's unceremonious birth in 18th century Paris, in a fish market where he's left to die by his mother in a puddle of putrefactive filth, maggots and flopping fish heads.

Other scenes -- such as the film's highly sensual, surreal climax -- leave you longing to catch a whiff of whatever the characters onscreen are smelling, although as the story turns out, it's probably best you can't. For much of this lavish and engrossingly nutty, if overlong, movie, Tykwer succeeds at conveying fragrance through visuals, using rapid-fire editing, sensual lighting and lush cinematography to capture what Jean-Baptiste's highly sensitive nose is registering.

An unusually faithful adaptation, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer probably packs in too much of Suskind's book: The film's second act, in which Jean-Baptiste falls under the tutelage of a perfumer (Dustin Hoffman) who exploits the young man's talent for his own gain, injects an enjoyable note of campy humor to this otherwise somber movie, but it also adds considerable length to a film that already feels too long.

Much better are the film's opening 45 minutes, which depict Jean-Baptiste's gigantically sad childhood (like Dickens, only graver), and its final hour, in which our protagonist finally settles on his life mission: to create the greatest, most intoxicating scent the world has ever known. The fact that this involves the murder of many young women is, in his mind, only an unfortunate coincidence.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer never tries to make Jean-Baptiste sympathetic (actor Ben Whishaw plays him with the impenetrable intensity of a lunatic) but he's not rendered monstrous, either: He just is a victim of a passion larger and more powerful than any one man can handle. It is to director Tykwer's credit that, although you never come close to understanding Jean-Baptiste, you don't turn your nose up at him, either.