The collected works of ScottyB

Last night, we watched Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006).

We saw the preview of this at the cinema a while back and it must have slipped through the cracks because I don’t remember ever seeing it advertised in the cinema sites. Nonetheless, I caught it for the DVD release.

The story focuses on Jean-Baptiste Grenouille who is born against-the-odds and with a heightened sense of smell. While he enjoys his special talent for much of his early life (and also becomes much of an outcast because of it), he only realises his true potential later in the film.

Working alongside Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman) he begins creating some of the world’s finest perfumes with the goal of learning how to ‘capture’ scents and smells.

This work, however, takes a dark turn as he searches for that divine scent.

Jean Baptiste believes the final ingredient of the divine perfume scent to be the very essence of the human, particularly the virginal female form in all its beauty. And instead of adding this as the thirteenth ingredient he creates his own special perfume from the essence of 13 such souls.

The result is an exceptional film, completely original to cinema. It is quite ingenious and despite its 147 minute duration, it manages to keep you interested and intrigued for its entirety.

It was not exactly as I expected looking at the trailers (though are they ever?) but I was still pleasantly surprised by this quite under-rated, unusual flick.

I have read that the book is far more of an insight to the mind behind the perfume (though I thought the film was explained perfectly anyway) and I may just have to keep a look out for that one.

“He lived to find beauty. He killed to possess it.”

Enjoyably quirky.