Review of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) by Filipeneto — 20 Feb 2018

This film portrays the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a French perfumer whose genius turns into madness. Directed by Tom Tykwer, who also collaborated on the screenplay alongside Andrew Birkin and Bernd Eichinger, it has Ben Whishaw in the main role and features also interpretations of Alan Rickman and Dustin Hoffman.

What's the boundary between genius and madness? It's hard to define it, and this movie makes me meditate about that. It's a positively challenging film, which is difficult to be indifferent. Or you like it, or you hate it. Based on Patrick Süskind's novel, the film knew how to be faithful to it without become predictable for those who haven't read it. The script is good but it's too warm and, despite the suspense, isn't able to create real tension moments before reaching the end, which is explosive and shocking to most impressionable audiences. Perhaps it's because of this that so many professional film critics have been so hard on this film. Okay, it has several flaws, the soundtrack doesn't stand out particularly, the costumes are ordinary despite fulfilling it's role, most of the cast was reasonable but didn't shine... but on the other hand these flaws are compensated by good photograph, the visually attractive scenarios, the correct narrator's diction and, above all, the superb interpretation of Ben Whishaw, who managed to give his character an extraordinary dichotomy of personalities and feelings, which reminded me "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".

For all this, and despite being far from perfection, this film is quite acceptable and has some quality moments. After seeing it, I conclude that I will not remember it as one of the best I've seen, but I didn't feel cheated in my expectations.