Scent of a killer

The title Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer is a bit misleading. The protagonist Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is certainly a serial killer, choosing his dozen or so victims in a predictable pattern and using the same method to kill them, but don’t go expecting to see another serial killer movie. And although Perfume is a period piece based on a bestselling novel, also don’t expect another The Name Of The Rose.

Magic realism is the name of the game here. We need to accept the premise that Grenouille has an almost supernatural sense of smell. Somehow it’s linked to his origin: in one of the most disgusting childbirth scenes you’re ever likely to see in a movie, his mother goes into labour under a table in the stinking fish markets of 18th century Paris. The first hour of the plot is fascinatingly detailed as we follow his progress, after being sold into slavery at an early age to the brutal boss of a tannery, to eventually become the most gifted perfume maker in Paris.

Once the murders begin, there is no mystery about his motives. Perhaps he was inspired by a legend told by his first tutor in the art of making perfumes -“ Dustin Hoffman in an odd piece of casting, but he’s okay. When a particular pharaoh’s tomb was opened in ancient Egypt, a scent was released so powerful that everyone on earth experienced a moment of bliss. All of Grenouille’s victims are beautiful young girls and he is harvesting their pheromones to combine them into the ultimate perfume.

The challenge for director Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola, Run) was to transport us into the world of Grenouille. The olfactory experience may seem harder to convey on film than with the magic of a novelist’s words but occasionally, with the help of John Hurt’s narration, Tykwer achieves this quite well, especially in the scene where Hoffman first smells Jean-Baptiste’s new perfume.

We also have to accept that Grenouille has no body odour of his own, so his victims cannot sense his presence as he emerges from the darkness to deliver the blow to the back of the head that kills them. These scenes exploit the subtlety of modern film stocks and need to be seen on the big screen -“ the cinematography and lush musical score make for a rich sensory experience.

But with a running time of 141 minutes, it’s admittedly a little bit dull and, for the low level of violence, the fact it scored an MA15+ rating seems questionable. On top of that Perfume is pretty coy in its handling of the kinky subject matter. There are repeated scenes of Grenouille sniffing the naked breasts of his victims but the richer odours of other parts of the body are ignored -“ he always seems to develop amnesia when he gets down to the navel.

The careful casting of unknown actor Ben Whishaw as Grenouille pays off -“ he’s creepy, wimpy, scary, and sometimes even kind of hot. And if you haven’t read the novel, the unexpected ending may fire your imagination.