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Sweet smell of success for this costume drama
PERFUME
Directed by Tom Tykwer
Certificate 15
THIS film is a foot fidgeting two-and-a-half hours long, and although the story could easily to squeezed and digested in around 90 minutes, the fact it is a bum-numbing length is actually its saving grace.
For there is plenty of beating about the bush by director Tom Tykwer, and this has created a gorgeous cinematic experience, with every camera angle lingering on a well framed moment.
And while the film is attractively made, it is about a horrible, horrible topic.
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is as unpleasant screen monster as you are likely to find this side of Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs.
Grenouille is born into poverty but he has a special skill that could offer a way out of the slums of Paris in the 1800s.
He is a master perfumer, driven by the need to make intoxicating scents, driven mad by an incredibly sensitive olfactory tract.
Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood) is the girl of his dreams – her body odour so rich and powerful that it acts like a drug on his poor mind.
Grenouille’s nose has set him up to make perfumes but it is eventually going to drive him to insanity.
Addicted to the scent of this beautiful young lady, he is distraught when she dies in an accident. He must find a way to recreate that certain smell, or lapse further into a twilight world where his nose twitches in the hope of finding that elusive scent. So he joins Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman, pictured) the perfume expert to learn how to make scents and put his natural gifts to good use.
The sets of Victorian Paris give the players a sensuous backdrop to perform in front of.
German film maker Tykwer has seen success before with Run Lola Run, while his film the Princess and the Warrior was also a hit in his home country. He has also used Paris as a backdrop before, his film True starring Natalie Portman shows he is intrigued by architectural forms as backdrops that make humans act in certain ways – you are a product of your environment, he says.
Tykwer has poured time and effort into the cinematography and it makes this a sensual experience. But the plot is just horrible, so you are torn between enjoying the sets and the performances, which are very watchable, to horror and disgust to his dastardly killing spree.
As he slays more women, trying to boil down their bodies to recapture that one, intoxicating scent he craves, his disregard for life makes for uncomfortable viewing.
But it works and the length of this film is forgivable when every scene is so ravishingly staged. |
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