(2006) ****1/2Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) was born with an acute sense of smell. He can identify any and all scents he has ever come in contact with. When he catches a whiff of a woman strolling through Paris he becomes mesmerized with her scent. He follows her and when she becomes frightened he cups his hand over her mouth to silence her accidentally fatally suffocating her. After her death he drinks in her essence sniffing her deeply from head to toe. He realizes he must learn how to capture such a fragrance.
He aspires to become an apprentice to the famous perfumer Giuseppe Baldini(Dustin Hoffman) so he can learn the fine art of making perfume oils. He learns much but Baldini's primitive method will not work for what he wants to do. Jean-Baptiste finds he must press on to learn how to capture a woman's essence.
On his journey he is captivated by the scent of a woman traveling on the road. He follows her back to town and discovers she is Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood) the daughter of Antoine Richis (Alan Rickman) a wealthy man who runs the town. He gets a job working for the perfume oil extractors and secretly develops a method for capturing a person's scent. Unfortunately his method leaves a trail of corpses.
I had never heard of this but after reading up on it apparently it was made from the Patrick Süskind novel "Das Parfum". I picked it solely because of the strange name and storyline. What I got was 2 ½ hours of pure entertainment. The entire story is narrated by John Hurt whom I believe is the best narrator.
I want to compare this film to something so you can understand the type of film it is but really there is nothing like it. After watching it I felt sort of like how I felt after watching the Princess Bride or Big Fish but Perfume has a much darker storyline. Due to murder and nudity I would warn this is not for kids but I believe most adults would really enjoy it. I am so pleased with this pick, I had it sitting in my house for nearly a week scolding myself for not noticing the 2 ½ hour run time. So glad I decided to pop it in last night, I loved it. A unique story that held my full attention from beginning to end. Bravo!
