When a novel really makes an impact, when it reaches such a level of popularity that nobody admits to not having got through it yet, readers' minds turn cautiously towards the inevitable film version. Is it possible for a film to evoke the vivid descriptions of smell in the novel Perfume, Donald Clarkeasks director Tom Tykwer

It is a strange anomaly of the movie business that, though huge sums are paid for the rights of such books, fans of the original material are rarely happy with the picture that results. Anthony Minghella's characteristically worthy Cold Mountain seemed considerably less fibrous than Charles Frazier's riveting source material. Billy Bob Thornton's All the Pretty Horses ambled where Cormac McCarthy's book gripped. The less said about Captain Corelli's Mandolin the soonest mended.

As a result, when a decade or so has passed with no film version arriving of a favoured book, fans of that work sometimes breathe a sigh of relief. Perhaps their favourite characters may have escaped the unwelcome attentions of Nicolas Cage after all.

There has been chatter about a film version of Patrick Suskind's hugely popular Perfume ever since its publication in 1985, but the author proved very reluctant to release hold of the rights. One can imagine his concerns. The book follows the adventures of an 18th-century perfume manufacturer, possessor of the most sensitive nose in Europe, who turns to murder in his pursuit of the olfactory essence of mankind. Is it possible for film to reproduce the vivid descriptions of scent in Suskind's writing? The world is about to find out.

Suskind, a reclusive German of whom no recent picture exists, has finally allowed Tom Tykwer, director of Run Lola Run, to direct a film of Perfume. What on earth did Tykwer do to persuade the writer to relent? Does he have some incriminating information on him? Were threats involved? "I actually don't know," Tykwer laughs. "The only thing I can imagine is that after being stubborn all these years he just became curious. He just wanted to know what it would be like. There can't be any other reason. He must have enough money. So, yes, I think he just got curious."

Though Suskind permitted the project to proceed, he made it very clear that he would not be seen on set or in the editing suite. "He was very polite, but he was terrified I would drag him into the process," Tykwer agrees. "It was like: 'Thank you, now please leave me alone.' It had been quite overpowering for him writing this successful book while at the same time being this reclusive person. So, he was very nice, but very firm: 'I am on your side, but I am not with you.' "

Suskind was, I imagine, probably quite cheered by that meeting. Tom Tykwer, a handsome 41-year-old from Wuppertal in Germany with chillingly good English, fairly brims over with confidence and artistic intelligence.

HE WAS BARELY in his teens when he began making short films on a super-8 camera, but, after leaving secondary school, failed spectacularly to gain even an interview at any of the film schools to which he applied. Like other directors such as Nanni Moretti and Richard Linklater, Tykwer went on to learn about his chosen medium through programming and projecting other people's films at an art-house cinema.

For 12 years he was the driving force behind the Moviemento cinema in Berlin. He made some well-received shorts in the early 1990s, but it was not until 1995 that he felt able to embark on a full-time career as a director. "It took that long simply because it is very difficult to make a movie and it is bloody expensive," he says. "I was rejected by every film school, but I don't think that hurt me in the end. It is good to be really committed to your first films. When you pay for it yourself, when you have to get credit from the bank, you have proved you really want to do it. You have paid with blood and sweat."

Tykwer admits that in his early years he was frequently awoken by men in brown coats calling to repossess his furniture. But everything changed in 1998 with the release of Run Lola Run. Utilising an array of film-making styles, the film told the story of the title character's sprint through the city three times over, allowing a different conclusion to the tale on each occasion.

The film, starring a flame-haired Franka Potente, went on to become the biggest grossing German film of its year, and managed to break out of art-houses and into multiplexes the world over. Run Lola Run even achieved the ultimate accolade of a tribute from The Simpsons. In the episode "Trilogy of Error", Lisa goes through a similar experience to Lola's.

"I am super-proud of that," he beams. "Of all the awards I have received that is the biggest. And what's great is that it is a particularly good episode of The Simpsons. It is one of the best."

After eight years he has had time to reflect on Run Lola Run's success. So, how did it manage to break into the mainstream? "People are longing for peculiar things, strange things, inspiring things that are still entertaining," he says. "That was the case with Run Lola Run and that is the case with Perfume in Germany. It is huge there. This very strange material has been out-grossing Harry Potter. It is rare that something peculiar can be so entertaining."

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is certainly the most high-profile film Tykwer has made since Lola. In 2000 he delivered The Princess and the Warrior, a modestly successful psychological drama again starring Potente (the director's then girlfriend). Then he embarked on Heaven, an interesting, if flawed, adaptation of a script by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski. Neither film replicated the critical or commercial success of Lola.

So what of Perfume? Should Suskind enthusiasts be afraid? Well, the hugely expensive European co-production certainly benefits from gorgeous camera-work and fine performances. Ben Whishaw, a young English actor, praised for a remarkable Hamlet at the Old Vic two years ago, brings seriously creepy intensity to Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the deranged anti-hero. But the film, which is presented in neither Odorama nor Smellovision, is still missing something. Prose can make a much better stab at conveying scents than cinema can.

"I don't agree," Tykwer says. "Film can be abstract and descriptive. It has its own codes. When a line in a book says 'it smells like soap' it's true that every single reader imagines that smell. In a film you will see the soap and then cut to something else and that cut stands in for the line. That is something audiences have learned over the past 100 years."

WELL, PERHAPS. But Perfume is full of scents more obscure to us than that of soap. How can a film possibly convey the sensation of a newly devised perfume? As he is about to reply, Tykwer notices a refrain in the muzak in the background that reminds him of the theme from John Carpenter's great horror film Halloween. Like Carpenter, Tykwer has a hand in writing the score for his own films.

"I hear that and I am transported back 30 years to when I saw that film first. Now only music and smell can do that. Only they can bring you back in that way. The world of perfumery is rich with references to music and with good cause. So I have gone to some strange orchestral places and tried to find the smell of a note and use that."

By which I suppose he means music stands in for scent. This makes a kind of sense on paper, but the scenes that most effectively convey the smell of things are those that bring the camera among rotting fish and putrescent bodies. The score helps little there.

Another problem relates to cinema's perennial inability to get to grips with magic realism. The most obvious example in the film involves a mass orgy in which the citizens of a town set about one another with startling lasciviousness. It cannot be denied that, if nothing else, the scene is a triumph of logistics. How on earth do you get so many people to take off their clothes and do what they do?

"Well, we ended up doing that in Spain," he says. "Obviously in the north there they are very open-minded people. They are experimental. There was a long process of casting. We had to choose people with the right appearance. We wanted them to look period and strangely there are people that don't look period. People who always look modern."

All well and good, but how did he choreograph the mass rumpy-pumpy? "I got some help from a dance company who were scattered about the crowd. But I had also to shout a lot through my megaphone."

Patrick Suskind will surely be delighted that the film-makers have gone to such lengths to replicate the more spectacular scenes in his novel. Then again maybe, he has not seen the film. Showing characteristic reserve, the author refused to attend the premiere.

"It would have been an amazingly spectacular thing for him to go the opening night, so that was a shame," Tykwer says. "But, you know, I always imagine that he probably sneaked in to see it on the first week. I imagine him going into a suburban Bavarian theatre in a coat, secretly spying on us." We will probably never know.