REVIEWED - PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER:IF ALFRED Hitchcock had made a film of Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume he would, most likely, have plucked out the nastiest murders, taken note of any potentially unhealthy romantic attachments and thrown everything else in the bin. Mind you, exceptions such as Rebecca noted, Hitch rarely tackled prestigious, prize-winning novels. Here's why.
Tom Tykwer, the talented German director of Run Lola Run, aware of the reading public's affection for Süskind's delicious literary Grand Guignol, has taken great care to transfer as much of the source material as possible onto the screen. Watch as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, played with gaunt malignity by young Ben Whishaw, is born among rotting carp in the fish-markets of a stinking 18th-century Paris.
The possessor of a stunningly sensitive nose, Jean-Baptiste later becomes apprentice to Dustin Hoffman's once great perfumier and helps the older man re-establish his reputation. But Jean-Baptiste has a secret. Sometime earlier he murdered a young fruit-seller and, haunted by the scent of her dying body, has set himself the task of capturing the olfactory essence of humanity. Others will die in the process.
Tykwer has made many smart decisions during the development of this lavish European co-production. John Hurt, adopting the same wry tone he used for Lars Von Trier's Dogtown, intones excerpts from Süskind's book with hypnotic mellifluousness. Whishaw, a promising English stage actor, makes the central role his own. The music, co-written by the director, chimes melodically with the vistas of, variously, busy cities, lavender fields and scarred bodies. And, on occasion, the elements all come together to produce startling cinema.
Grenouille's birth is, in particular, brilliantly disgusting and very effective in the way it sets the tone for further miseries to come.
So, why does Perfume ultimately end up feeling just a little unsatisfactory? The problems lie with the book. The appeal of the original text had a lot to do with the author's terrific descriptions of scent. Here, Tykwer, dealing in a medium which can appeal to at least two of the senses directly, has to fall back on some rather crude audiovisual gimmicks. When a new, delicious perfume is released into the air, the director has arcs of flowers and other delicious things spin about those smelling it. This looks more than a little desperate.
Worse still, Tykwer, refusing to be as ruthless as Hitchcock with material that simply won't work on film, retains most of the book's magic-realist turns. Put simply, we will, when reading a book by a South American Nobel Prize winner, simply accept that a nun might, on occasion, turn into a crocodile. When something similar happens in the cooler, more stubbornly tangible medium of cinema, we will want to know why.
This is a decent film made with a great deal of skill. But it would have been better with a bit more Psycho and a bit less Rebecca.
(opens Tuesday)
