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Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) was born in the middle of the fish market in Paris—the dirtiest, smelliest part of Europe’s largest city—in the 1700s. His mother assumed he wouldn’t survive—because none of her other four did—so she left him to die. When Jean-Baptiste was found alive, however, his mother was arrested—and hung—for trying to murder him. And Jean-Baptiste was brought to an orphanage.
It’s not long before Jean-Baptiste discovers that he has an unusual ability. Though he doesn’t actually have a scent of his own, Jean-Baptiste was born with an extraordinary sense of smell. He can smell a frog from several feet away. He can smell glass and metal and individual people. He becomes obsessed with scent—and with creating and preserving it. So he eventually finds himself in the laboratory of Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman), a perfumer who seems to be losing his touch. When he discovers Jean-Baptiste’s abilities, Baldini hires him immediately.
Jean-Baptiste creates several popular perfumes for Baldini, and he learns Baldini’s techniques. He learns how to distill flowers to preserve their scent—but he finds that it doesn’t work on everything. What he really wants is to forever preserve the scent of a woman. He wants to create the perfect scent—and his obsession leads him down a dark path.
Director Tom Tykwer (Lola Rennt) is known for his striking films—and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is no exception. It’s definitely striking…visually. It’s a spectacularly artistic film (and it’s pretty clear that Tykwer has a thing for women with unnaturally red hair). But the story leaves a lot to be desired. Considering the film’s painfully long 147-minute run time, you’d think that, by the end, you’d have a little bit of an idea of what’s going on—and why. You think you’d be fascinated by the unusual and intriguing Jean-Baptiste—that you’d be interested in what makes him tick. But the movie goes blindly on, giving its audience too few hints as to why Jean-Baptiste does what he does (or why we should care). It’s hard to see the point in it all—and Whishaw’s performance is bland—so it failed to keep me interested. Granted, after it was over, after I thought about it for a while, I could come to a few conclusions about his motivation—but by then it was too late. I didn’t really care anymore.
Perfume had plenty of potential to be a brilliant film—especially with Tykwer in the director’s chair. But the beauty of this one really is only skin-deep.
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