Review of 'Perfume:The Story of a Murderer'

SPOILER ALERT

I recently watched Perfume:The Story of a Murderer. I had heard that it was worth watching and thought I would give it a go. Just in case you don't already know, the film is about a man who was born with an incredible sense of smell(trust me it is freakishly good!). As he gets older he discovers a perfume shop and wants the perfumer to teach him how to preserve smell. Although kind of weird at first, the film at this point seems ok. He learns that to fully understand how to capture and preserve smell he must travel to a place named Grass(hope that's how you spell it). Whilst there he starts to murder women to collect their scent as he finds the odor of a woman to be somewhat beautiful. The more he murders the more people catch on that there is a killer that needs to be hunted down and prosecuted. He finally gets caught but not until his very special perfume has been fully constructed. He is ordered to death by cross and an iron bar but as he approaches the podium where his death awaits he applies his perfume onto himself. Suddenly the whole crowd cries that he is innocent and an angel. It is as if the perfume has put everyone into a trance. People start taking their clothes off and all of a sudden there is a gigantic orgy(with the Pope involved!). As all of this goes on Ben Whishaw looks down on the crowd in realising the power of his dead women scent. When all is over Jean-Baptiste(the murderer played by Ben Whishaw) is announced innocent and everyone in the audience awakes in horror and embarrassment of what they did. He returns to Paris, the place of his birth and childhood where he once again applies the perfume and is(what seems to be)eaten alive by some common-folk.

The film is interesting to say the least. Of course, as always Whishaw is elegantly brilliant and makes acting look as easy as drinking water. However for the concept of the film, well there are no words. At times the film is great but I pin that solely on the acting performances. I found the film, in parts, to be ridiculous; Jean-Baptiste's sense of smell isn't just out of the ordinary, it becomes silly and almost comical. Also the orgy scene ant the end completely erases any sense of the film being good. An audience being transfixed and controlled by a perfume sounds reasonable to find in a fantasy film, but when you are discussing murders, an orgy over a smell(and a smell that has been created from only a drip of perfume on a cloth) is more than ridiculous. Rosie Bowen

If you have seen the film, please let me know what you thought by leaving a comment below.