|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer (2006)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Storyline
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in the stench of eighteenth century Paris, develops a superior olfactory sense, which he uses to create the world's finest perfumes. His work, however, takes a dark turn as he tries to preserve scents in the search for the ultimate perfume. |
Backdrops
The Director
Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer (born 23 May 1965) is a German film director, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing Run Lola Run (1998), Heaven (2002), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), and The International (2009).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Tom Tykwer, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
User Reviews
|
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
|
|
|
|
|
On iPlayer, so decided to give it a watch last night.
Plot - adaptation of Patrick Süskind's bestselling novel set in 18th century Paris. Grenouille is a young man born in squalor with an extraordinary sense of smell. During a visit into the city he is entranced by the scent of a young woman selling Peaches, following her leads to unfortunate events and he loses that 'particular' scent. He wants to learn the craft of the Perfumer in order to capture and keep scents so it can never be lost to him, and he goes about it in a most gruesome and grisly way...........
Thought - Quite engrossing even if it does lose its way slightly towards the end. The first half hour depicting the squalor of Paris and his discovery of his extraordinary sense is excellent, Tom Tykwer shoots it in a really interesting way and the stillborn baby-who's still alive scene was particularly good. He manages to evoke some real tension and a sense of magic in the perfume concoction at Grenouille's first 'audition' and keeps it intersting for the most part. Then after it does descend into the slightly camp/period drama cliche and implausible and the resolution is....well.........let's just say it didn't work for me, evoking more a than the wonder I think the film was going for. Overall it does come across as a Grimm fairy tale though a lot more graphic.
One of my bugbears with the film was despite being set in France everyone spoke English, in some cases it felt more like 18th London than Paris. It's minor but having native French speakers instead of the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman who just steal the screen and not in a way I think is beneficial to the film, would have worked bett...
View full review
|
|
|
|
reviewed by Queequeg (Filmaster.com) on the 20th of January 2012
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Not bad, but it seemed mostly like an exercise and didn't have any soul to it. The period reproduction was overkill. Yes, it was visually arresting but it felt as if Tykwer tried too hard to be convincing. I was left with questions, which I perceived as gaps in the story rather than mysteries to be solved. I didn't think Grenouille was compelling enough. Certain elements were intriguing, such as the way all his caretakers died after letting him go, but nothing was developed to satisfaction.