PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER Film Review - 7/2/07

The sort of film you will either loathe or love - I fall somewhere between the two? Having seen a Trailer for this I was fairly intrigued and it's a film that suddenly flies off kilter very fast indeed. Directed by Tom Tykwer ("Run Lola Run") and Writing Credits by Bernd Eichinger (Currently "The Resident Evil" series and some other very impressive credits) and Andrew Birkin (Of "The Cement Garden" fame and also impressive credits) you can see all three of these people's work clearly in this film from the film-stylisation, set-pieces and story material. Boy is given birth to in the slums of 18th. Century Paris in the muck and dredge in the street in a graphic scene from the offset with the Narrator's voice (A sly John Hurt) filling in the plot as we go along. Later we get film stalwarts Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman chewing the scenery as the film is laid out step by step. It is a bizarre subject matter and really gets brought to life as the boy from the slums has a talent no-one else has in the shape of a sense of smell that far surpasses anyone else. Unfortunately it all gets rather twisted as the lad screws things up in a fixation on capturing the scent of various women to combine and produce the greatest fragrance and hence murder ensues. Quite rapidly it strays from interesting to stupid; in such an unbelievable way that you pity that it has run off the rails so soon, by the end you'll think it preposterous and just let it go. Interesting idea - Just badly executed. Good poster for the film though!