Perfume

I recently saw this movie and enjoyed it immensely. In part of Spirited Away the cartoonist manage to show smell. We discussed how difficult it is to show smell in a movie. Now imagine a movie in which the entire plot line is based off of smell, and imagine this done magnificently. You now have a toe in the water of understanding how wonderful Perfume is.

Some of Perfume's supporting actors are particularly famous. Dustin Hoffman plays Giuseppe Baldini, a washed up perfumer whose discovery of Jean-Babtiste Grenoulle (Ben Whishaw) revitalizes his career. Alan Rickman plays Richis, the father of Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood). More about these two characters might give away too much about the movie.

To complete this wonderful cast, Tom Tykwer choose someone unexpected. Instead of choosing actors like Brad Pitt or Leornardo Dicaprio, who both wanted to be the star of this film, Tykwer choose Ben Whishaw. Although Whishaw hasn't been in many other movies and hasn't made that big a name for himself, he played Jean-Babtiste Grenoulle perfectly. His acting made the movie great.

Perfume is set in 18th century France. It is centered around the life of Jean-Babtiste Grenoulle, the man with the best sense of smell that has ever existed. Grenoulle is quite eccentric and his smell becomes his life.

Perfume combines violence and nudity, two aspects of the movie that are necessary to the plot. It is rated R for "Aberrant behavior involving nudity, violence, sexuality, and disturbing images." I was fine with the extremely long length of the movie because I enjoyed it so much that I didn't want it to end. On a 5 point scale I rate this movie close to the top. I place it somewhere between a 4.8 and a 4.9. The only reasons it lost any points was because there were minute ridiculosities and at times it seemed a little contrived. However, I am quite a structured thinker so its slightly contrived nature didn't bother me.

I am not sure what genre to place Perfume in. You might call it a drama; you might call it a thriller. You might call it dark comedy; you might even call it a tragedy. I prefer to just call it amazing.