The movie is set in 18th century France. It opens with the shadowed face of a man with the spotlight specifically on his nose. As the movie continued, this was the story of a special man named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who had a very acute and well-developed olfactory sense. The movie follows Grenouille from his miserable birth in a Paris marketplace, childhood in an orphanage, teenage years in a tannery, then back to cacophonous Paris and finally to the quiet perfume town Grasse.
In Paris, he was attracted by the scent of a pretty redheaded girl selling plums, but this encounter had an unfortunate end. So this sparked in him an obsession on how to capture and preserve the essential scent of women. It depicts his discovery that he has no scent of his own, his insatiable grisly quest for the perfect scent that propels him into a series of murders of young beautiful women; and the incredible irresistible power this scent has on people. You won't believe your eyes in the scenes showing what happened to the crowd who caught under the spell of this enchanting scent.
The story borders on grotesque, and the whole movie really teeters on that edge. The realistic nature of the set design, cinematography and editing set this above the formulaic massacre movie. There are only two recognizable actors, Dustin Hoffman as the Italian perfumer who taught our protagonist his trade, and Alan Rickman, who played the father of thirteenth and final girl he was stalking. But they, along the rest of the generally unknown cast, especially Ben Whishaw, as the flawed main character, really get into the very fiber of the strange story and they deliver the goods.
I commend the director Tom Tykwer for his vision. In "Perfume," Tykwer had the seemingly impossible challenge of interpreting a world of smells and odors onto the silver screen. With his effective use of rich imagery and color, what is fragrant was clearly distinguished from the putrid. (The only other film of Tykwer I had seen before was the amazing "Run Lola Run." I believe he has an upcoming more mainstream action film entitled "The International" starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts.)
Granted this movie is not for everyone. You would need a strong stomach to make it though the film. Yet the journey of this film will draw you in to join Grenouille in his quest. The ending may be less than what you would expect given the build-up. The fate of Grenouille at the end of the movie was the one big question mark for me. I would really like how that scene was written in the book. I felt something got lost in the translation of the word to images.
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