Does it stink or does it smell?
The following is my review on the film Perfume, which I saw last night.

"The book also doesn’t smell," director Tom Tykwer said in many interviews when asked about the difficulty to display smell on the screen. He is correct, but while the book doesn’t smell, Patrick Süskind made the reader experience the world in a way he had never seen it before. It never mattered that the reader didn’t smell anything.

In the film the attack on the audience’s senses is meant to be conveyed by the pictures and the music. Indeed, visually the film is a feast for the eyes – both disgusting and beautiful. For example, the scenes at the beginning at the fish market are so nauseating that sensitive viewers might be close to vomiting. In other scenes the camera revels in the beauty of the objects it shows – be it the lavender fields around Grasse, the mirabelle girl in Paris or Laure Richis. But somehow the pictures, no matter whether they are repulsive or picturesque, remain superficial and never touch you deep down in your heart.

The orchestral music, interspersed by singing, often comes across as overly dramatic – especially in the second half of the film. The score does certainly ‘smell’, but tends to drown the other more delicate elements of the film.

When I watched the film, there was a break after about half of the film, so that the members of the audience could buy some more popcorn. But when the second half started, it turned out that there also was a break in the plot. What had been the attempt of a character study, then turned into something resembling a thriller.

While the first half, which actually contains two thirds of the book, is abridged, it still sticks quite closely to the book. Aspects of Grenouille’s (Ben Whishaw) childhood as well as of his apprenticeships with Grimal and Baldini are left out, but all the hard facts are there.

It’s much trickier when it comes to Grenouille’s inner workings, his emotions and his relationship to other people. The camera dwells on his singular gift, his sense of smell, and you often see Grenouille sniffing and with his eyes wide open. But while this is a slightly strange behaviour, he always remains human. In the book he’s called a tick, and there are also several scenes that describe him as knowing how to orientate himself by his sense of smell alone – like some animal. The fact that the people dislike him and that most of them are thoroughly crept out by him, is hardly mentioned.

Dustin Hoffman’s approach towards his role has some clownish elements, but you can easily see the tragic figure who has never been the great perfumer he would have liked to be and who now seizes his opportunity.

The cave scene has been drastically cut, but I think that’s acceptable, as Grenouille and the audience still learn that he doesn’t have a smell of his own. What is more problematic is the fact that it is almost completely left out that he now creates perfumes for himself so that he can approach people in different ‘disguises’.

The good thing about shifting the timeline is that the audience already catches a first glimpse of Alan Rickman after half of the film. ;) His role carries much more weight than it does in the book. Richis is a real antagonist to Grenouille – another element that reminds of a thriller.

The second half, which starts when Grenouille moves to Grasse, has been turned into something like a thriller. There are much more changes from the book now, and not all of them were necessary.

One crucial difference is that Grenouille not only smells Laure Richis but also sees her. He sees her when he arrives in Grasse, sneaks up on her at her birthday party and follows her at another event and almost kills her. This is rather misleading because the camera dwells on her beauty, her red hair, her green eyes, her lavish dresses, so that it almost impossible not to think that Grenouille is captivated by her beauty.

In the book he never sees her, but only smells her. And in the book he’s patient and bides his time. He doesn’t sneak around and hides behind bushes and walls like some serial killer in a thriller. Of course, he will eventually become a serial killer, but not because he likes to kill, but because it’s the only way to gather the girls’ scent.

An added scene that also stresses the idea that one suddenly watches a thriller is when Grenouille is almost caught while he is experimenting with a dead girl in Madame Arnulfi’s shop. This might have been meant to raise the tension, but since the film isn’t a thriller, this is quite unnecessary.

The scriptwriters also invented some background information on some of the girls Grenouille kills. I remember Tom Tykwer saying in Wuppertal that this was necessary. He explained that Patrick Süskind let Grenouille kill 24 girls in one chapter without giving any details, but that on the screen you had to show them. Now that I’ve seen the film, I disagree. The little story lines around the prostitute, the twins and the lavender girl don’t help the audience to understand something it wouldn’t have understood without them. On top of that the film fails to mention that all the killed girls were on the cusp of womanhood.

As it turned out Alan Rickman’s role is much bigger than was to be expected, because his character Antoine Richis is not only shown in invented scenes like the birthday party and the other event, which was probably meant as a party because allegedly the murderer had been captured. There are also several scenes of the town council. It’s here that he explains his theories about the murderer and his motives.

His not so paternal feelings towards Laure have been cut, the dream about her being dead hasn’t. This is a very well played scene – that look of terror on his face when he wakes up and runs to Laure’s room to make sure that she is still alive.

Richis comes across as a powerful and commanding man – much more commanding than Grenouille ever could have been. If it weren’t for Grenouille’s sense of smell and his talent in perfume making, he’d never had a chance against Richis.

About the orgy: In the film the scene is in slow motion, and the people move as if they were in trance, undulate back and forth, start to undress and finally kiss and touch each other. The audience sees a lot of naked bodies that don’t have sex. The scene is tame, but I don’t think this is out of fear that the rating might be higher for the film if there were sex. I rather got the impression that the scene was supposed to convey the love the people feel towards Grenouille and each other. The problem is, though, that in the book there’s nothing beautiful about the orgy. While the people feel love, their actions aren’t described as romantic love-making. What they do instead is fuck.

While watching the orgy, Grenouille remembers the mirabelle girl. When he follows her in Paris and inadvertently kills her, the audience sees him ripping off her clothes, but he isn’t interested in her body at all, only her scent. But now he seems to dream and see himself with the girl in a love scene. Since love quite rightly has been never mentioned in the film, it’s totally misplaced to now indicate that the mirabelle girl was his first (and only) love or something similar.

What I can say is that the film is beautiful to watch: e.g. dirty Paris, ragged and lavish costumes, Baldini’s perfume shop with all its vials. It’s incredible what the set designers and costume designers created. They really managed to transfer the audience to the past without making it look fake. Compared to many other costume films that’s an achievement, but it’s not enough. In the end the film doesn’t manage to capture that morbid fascination the reader feels for Grenouille.

I don’t think this lack is only Ben Whishaw’s fault, although I think he could have shown a few more facial expressions. Wide eyes, a half open mouth and a tilted head only convey that much. He just doesn’t say very much, and his actions don’t always speak for himself. In the book the reader is told many details by the narrator. Therefore, to convey at least a certain amount of what is going on in Grenouille’s head, the film narrator, which explains quite a lot particularly during the first half, is definitely necessary.

Although Dustin Hoffman as Baldini and Alan Rickman as Richis have much smaller roles, their motivations and feelings are much easier to understand, which might be partly due to the fact that they have more to say. Baldini also talks in the book, and Richis' thoughts from the book have been turned into dialogue.

***

What gave me a thrill during the first half of the film is that one could actually recognise a street or house in Barcelona, which stood in for Paris. I love to see places I’ve been to in films.

The photo is taken from today's edition of the magazine Bunte. It shows Ben Whishaw and Alan Rickman at the premiere in Munich.