Perfume

Review by Clint Morris

You can smell a bad film adaptation of a best-selling book from a mile away – and Perfume has one hell of a stench. The lead character in the film initially can’t tell the difference between a good and a bad smell; audiences can – this stinks to high heaven.

Carl Rudolph Stargher, Martha Beck. Catherine Trammel. Jezzie Flannigan. Roman Bridger. Captain Spaulding. All serial killers who’ve been the subject of atrocious movies. Now, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille joins the not so popular club.

Based on the book (Everyone who purchased it is now in sanitary confinement, right?) by Patrick Suskind, Perfume is the wacky tale of an orphaned kid and his penchant for smells. In an effort to bottle a particular ‘smell’ (say the scent of a dead woman that he doesn’t want to lose), he snags a job as an assistant to a veteran perfumer (Dustin Hoffman). The job is the beginning of the end of his mind. He then proceeds to start knocking off people, in an effort to bottle their distinctive smells. Oh, and there’s an orgy in there too. And some quick-cuts of worms. Oh, and maggots.

Perfume is just stupid for stupid’s sake. Moving uneasily between horror and black comedy, it makes no sense; has no point; and ends on a note worse than any Guy Sebastian song. In many respects, it’s as if director Tom Twyker wanted to see just how crazy he could make his movie without anyone interfering or asking him to change it. That’s the flip side of a director being allowed ‘his cut’. And another reason why filmmakers should be drug-tested before a roll of film has even been shot.

Granted, there are a couple of moments in the film when it does start to resemble something half-interesting – the scenes with Dustin Hoffman mainly – but for the most part, it’s a stitched-together mess. There are three different movies here, and not one of them is any good.

For a film critic to recommend seeing Epic Movie over this, is saying something.

Avoid like Candida.

1 out of 5

Perfume
Australian release: 1st February, 2007
Cast: Ben Wishaw, Alan Rickman, Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Hurd-Wood
Director: Tom Twyker
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