Review of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) by Mohamed F — 22 Apr 2011

Other than the strong atmosphere inspired by French cinema, and the sublime-at-times editing, this movie is all flash..

I was shocked to see THREE names credited for the screenplay, one of them being Tykwer himself, as the script was the anchor that brought that movie down for me.

The script was fine during the 1st and 2nd acts and it fit the story perfectly along with the direction, which might have been at times a bit over the top, but then come the 3rd act and the whole thing just starts falling apart, the theme and tone of the movie change drastically as if you're suddenly watching a different movie than the one you've been watching for about an hour and a half, and that turn that it took starts to fringe and get weirder until it leads to an anti-climatic, dramatically illogical, abrupt ending.

I could have given this movie a lower score if it wasn't for the beautiful cinematography and the occasionally sublime editing, while the acting was consistent and plausible, it was nothing phenomenal in my opinion, and the directorial style was stylistic and flashy but it lacked the craftsmanship of a storyteller, which sometimes made the directorial choices leave me with the impression that I'm watching a commercial rather than a movie with a story to tell.

All in all, it's a fine job actually, and it's a pretty big deal for Tykwer as his sophomore picture, though I'd rather he wasn't as faithful to the novel as he tried and pay more attention to the structure of the film at hand, it just lead to a very unnecessarily long movie that could have been much shorter for its own good.