Austinist Film Review: Perfume

Concerned as it is with the decidedly non-visual sensation of smell, Patrick Suskind’s novel Das Parfum would appear an unlikely candidate for a movie. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the film rights to Das Parfum were offered to everyone from Stanley Kubrick (who declared the book unfilmable) to Tim Burton before they fell into the hands of Tom Tykwer, the German auteur behind Run Lola Run. The result, which opens today, is probably the most faithful, and best, adaptation anyone could have hoped for, which is saying something considering the story’s intensely literary nature.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, orphaned by the state after his mother attempts to smother him in fish guts, grows up in an orphanage and a tannery, just another urchin with bad teeth and a short life expectancy. Before long, however, he has found his true calling—perfumery—by the rather unorthodox manner of stalking and murdering a bosomy young virgin. Despite lacking certain social skills, Grenouille has a superhuman sense of smell (the film turns his gift into a kind of pre-industrial Spidey-Sense), and after a life of smelling dirt, leather and slime becomes overwhelmed by the smells of the city. Grenouille manages to talk his way into the shop of a has-been perfumer, played by an agreeably oblivious Dustin Hoffman, and single-handedly revives the old-timer’s business before setting off on a journey to divine the deepest secrets of trapping scent. Meanwhile, a string of virgin murders culminates in a manhunt across the French countryside.

Das Parfum begat a subgenre of novels one might call “historical grime,” wherein the author describes the unsanitary conditions of pre-industrial civilization as vividly as possible. Not one to be outdone, Tykwer fills his frame with refuse, blood and worse, effectively interpreting the viscera of Suskind’s language without really translating its transcendent ghastliness. In many ways, Perfume is the epitome of a bloated period epic, wherein lavish costumes figure more prominently than taut pacing and all Europeans, regardless of nationality, speak with British accents. But the story is so bizarre, and the details so delightfully obscure (the perfume-making sequences are especially engaging), that Tykwer can be forgiven somewhat for falling in love with his budget.

No, the main issue most folks will have is the lack of decent characterizations. Grenouille, played expertly by the wiry young British actor Ben Whishaw, is such a pathologically driven creature he resembles Ridley Scott’s Alien more than an actual human being. Dustin Hoffman aquits himself well as the washed-up perfumer, but Alan Rickman, as Grenouille’s nemesis, flattens every second he’s on camera with portentous line readings and (Tykwer’s fault) long. Pauses. Between. Words. The actresses playing Grenouille’s victims are given so little to do they may as well have been CGI. Technically, the film is impeccable, all languid camera swoops and super-saturated colors. But your enjoyment is going to hinge on your reaction to Grenouille sniffing after his prey, Easter Bunny style, at moments intended to be fairly humorless.

Perfume: Story of a Murderer opens today at the Dobie Theatre.