August 25th, 2010 
maureen 
PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER was said to be a novel unfilmable because of its unique subject matter which is a man by the name of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) who is gifted with a sublime sense of smell greater than anyone’s on the face of the planet. He just so happens to use this gift to kill beautiful women in order to capture their essence in order to create the greatest perfume ever.
Director Tom Tykwer does an inspiring job capturing the essence of what many deemed was unfilmable. Having delivered the equally provocative RUN LOLA RUN and THE PRINCESS & THE WARRIOR, Tykwer has bounced back into the driver’s seat after the less-than film that was HEAVEN. It also helps that Grenouille is probably the most sympathetic serial killer ever put to screen by the equally talented Whishaw. We are allowed to get into the mind of a murderer and “smell†what he smells without ever trully involving our own senses thus preventing us from trully enjoying in the sensual preasures that he does and so desires. Whishaw also brings such sadness to Grenouille who was all but abandoned as a child, almost smothered to death as a baby, and made to work in a tanning factory for most of his life prior to encountering Dustin Hoffman’s Giuseppe Baldini who would teach him the art of the perfumer and thus lead Grenouille on the path of discovering how to capture beauty forever in a bottle.
Rachel Hurd-Wood as Laura, Grenouille’s object of affection, and Alan Rickman as her father Antoine Richis, and John Hurt as the Narrator, round out the cast. They all at some point in the film give you a moment where they might sympathize with Grenouille even though he plans on killing them, which begs the question of whether or not Grenouille is trully evil or a product of his environment. PERFUME is a film not easily catagorized and labeled and will hopefully usher in a new wave of inventive films.
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