
Perfume is passionately made, vividly colorful, sinfully sensuous but slightly slow and terribly long. An authentic book-to-screen story, directed by Tom Tykwer(Run Lola Run) and originally written as a hugely popular novel[Das Parfum] by Patrick Suskind.
It talks about a French orphan boy with a superhuman sense for smell. As he grows, he meets a perfume maker, displays his sense of smell talent, learns the art of perfume making but unfortunately turns into a schizophrenic. The ending has to be seen to be enjoyed.
The whole movie is crowded with amazing frame compositions, great cinematography and lovely BGMs. But what’s more attractive is the acute talent of the director to bring the sense of smell into the movie and still make the audience relate to it.
Ben Wishaw as Genouille, the passionate perfume maker is every man’s dream of following ones passion. Passionate enough to even turn into a solid schizo. As he runs behind the chariot in the final scenes, with a handful of “special” perfumes, one would understand his perfume passion. A career high role for Ben and he has done an amazing job of making the best of it.
Dustin Hoffman does a cameo as the perfume master. I wish someone else played the role. It didn’t fit him too well.
Even as the movie starts with the story ending, you know that it isn’t going to be the actual one. After a long wait of 2 hours and 15 minutes, the final scenes arrive and they are totally unbelievable, conceived and captured on camera extremely well. The whole movie rests in that final sequence and you can clearly see, a normal psycho movie turning into a beautiful one right at that moment. Good Experience.