First review of Perfume the Movie

[Guest guest]

http://www.screendaily.com/story.asp?storyid=27693 & r=true

Ha ha -- the part he critiques as being too prominent:

>and is often too caught up in detailed historical scene-setting

I want to see all that historical scene-setting, like the photos I posted a

link to the other day, the enfleurage, the distillation, the studio scene

with the organ with all the little corks in the bottles -- wonderful! I can

ignore the story line, because I don't like it anyway, lol.

>

Anya

http://anyasgarden.com/perfumes.htm Parfums Natural

http://artisannaturalperfumers.com The Artisan Natural Perfumers Guild

http://.com The Premier Natural Perfume Site Gateway

[Guest guest]

Anya <mccoy@...> wrote:

http://www.screendaily.com/story.asp?storyid=27693 & r=true

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I want to see all that historical scene-setting, like the photos I posted a

link to the other day, the enfleurage, the distillation, the studio scene

with the organ with all the little corks in the bottles -- wonderful!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Anya

oh poooh.............I 've got to wait till Dec 8 till I can see it! Not

here in the Uk till then!..............

Janita

---------------------------------

Try the all-new . " The New Version is radically easier to use " –

The Wall Street Journal

[Guest guest]

They took this off the site except for subscriptions, but I wrote them and

they sent it to me:

Dir: Tom Tykwer. Ger-Fr-Sp. 2006. 140mins.

Tom Tykwer pulls out all the stops with his sumptuous English-language

adaptation of Suskind’s novel Perfume, making for a daring and

imposing achievement that is likely to leave audiences stunned and somewhat

exhausted rather than truly dazzled.

With its dark tone, wilfully morbid subject matter and antipathetic

protagonist, it is unlikely to recapture the commercial success of the

source novel, which has sold 15m copies worldwide (4m in Germany) since

publication in 1985.

Despite extravagant production design, occasional show-stopping sequences

and a flair for grisly historical flavour a la Terry Gilliam, Perfume never

quite feels like the distinctively authored piece that it might have been,

and is often too caught up in detailed historical scene-setting to catch

the eccentric and ironic magic-realist flavour of Suskind’s philosophical

fable. Critical response is likely to regard it as a prestige hit, admired

rather than much liked.

In German-language territories – Perfume opens on 800 prints in Germany and

Switzerland from Sept 14, a week after its Sept 7 world premiere - returns

will be very strong. Expect good, if lesser, box-office for this European

co-production in those other parts of the continent – it reaches France on

Oct 4, Spain on Nov 24 and the UK on Dec 8 – which welcomed similar

literary adaptations like The Name Of The Rose (also produced by Constantin).

In the US – where the R-rated Perfume enjoys limited release through

Paramount from Dec 27 - it is likely to figure more in awards consideration

for its production credits than at the box office, in part due to its

distinctly European brand of refined perversity.

Set in 18th-century France, the film – narrated dryly by Hurt - tells

of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Whishaw), born into squalor in a gruesomely

malodorous fish market, and raised as a solitary outsider in an orphanage,

where he discovers he is gifted (or cursed) with an abnormally acute sense

of smell.

As a young man, he comes under the tutelage of Baldini (Hoffman), a

once-great perfumer, whom he dazzles by his ability to knock up exquisite

scents with the instinctive panache of a cocktail mixer. But Baldini’s

patronage is not enough for the obsessive dreams of Grenouille, who is

intent on capturing definitively the smell of everything and anything –

from metal to dead cats to (eventually) people.

Grenouille heads south to Grasse in Provence, where he starts murdering

young women with an aim to distilling the perfect scent. His ultimate

victim seems fated to be the gorgeous, tres fragrant (Hurd-Wood),

daughter of merchant Richis (Rickman).

Grenouille finally looks set to face justice, but it’s then that he uncorks

his final perfume with sexually spectacular results, capping the film in an

audacious tableau that is likely to stand as the film’s great claim to

posterity.

Tykwer, once enfant terrible of new German cinema, comfortably settles into

his new role as a confident orchestrator of elaborate spectacle. Fans of

Run Lola Run will be surprised to see how much Perfume at times resembles a

traditional stately costume drama, complete with an often lethargic pace

that stretches its running time excessively (Suskind’s tightly-narrated

fable runs to around 260 pages in its Penguin edition).

The film makes most of an impression in the Paris-set first hour,

particularly with a sequence on Grenouille’s birth that briskly and

unnervingly establishes the sheer squalor of the 18th-century city.

Things slow down for the spell in Baldini’s shop, where the interior scenes

feel theatrical rather than cinematic, and where the narrative holds back

to make space for Hoffman’s extravagant performance. Powdered and

wigged to resemble Mr Punch, Hoffman plays Baldini for grotesque comedy,

with a distracting Italo-Brooklyn accent, and his camp flamboyance rather

overpowers the film. Yet when he drops out of the picture - about an hour

in through a magnificent CG sight gag - Perfume suddenly feels a lot less fun.

Tykwer does not quite work out how best to use Ben Whishaw, whose

saturnine, punky demeanour is certainly unsettling, but who is never quite

the centre of proceedings. One of the problems is how to dramatise a

character who is 100% obsession and whose being revolves entirely around

the olfactory (and who, what’s more, barely speaks). As the murder theme

takes over in the second half, so Grenouille becomes a period precursor of

the modern movie line of fetishistic serial killers, rather than the

elemental figure he appears in Suskind’s magic-realist novel.

To give the film the ironic, fable-like tone it requires, Hurt’s elegantly

laconic narration – as in Lars Von Trier’s Manderlay and Dogville – is

called on to do a little more work than it ideally might have.

Anya

http://anyasgarden.com/perfumes.htm Parfums Natural

http://artisannaturalperfumers.com The Artisan Natural Perfumers Guild

http://.com The Premier Natural Perfume Site Gateway