Review of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) by Diallogrant — 30 Jul 2009
Perfume is a visually lavish dark fairy tale about an obsessive man seeking beauty and recognition in a morally void society. The protagonist is born with a super-human sense of smell, a will to live, and nothing more.
Born and bred in a world where life is treated as a distant and vulgar second to money, we see the development of a man who relates to beauty only as possession, one more smell to be collected and preserved.
Finding the women who possess these scents to be obstacles to his obsession, he murders them, destroying them in the process of creating the most powerfully exquisite scent the world has ever known. It is not until the end of the film when he finally glimpses the dimension of beauty that issues from contact, from sharing--in a word, love--that he is able to feel any form of remorse.
Until then his quest to objectify and possess beauty and to force upon the world the value of his existence is mirrored by the society around him, from the brutal exploitation of the Parisian slums to the trophies and conceits of the nobility.
Perfume is a sensual marvel of a movie that explores morality and the profane in a lyrical way.
This review of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) was written by Diallogrant on 30 Jul 2009.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer has generally received positive reviews.
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