Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in the stench of 18th century Paris, develops a superior olfactory sense, which he uses to create the world's finest perfumes. However, his work takes a dark turn as he tries to preserve scents in the search for the ultimate perfume.
Perfume is a singularly audacious film — adapting an ostensibly unfilmable novel about scent into a visually ravishing, darkly operatic experience. The plot is gripping and deeply strange, tracing Grenouille's obsessive, murderous genius across 18th-century France with unflinching commitment. Tykwer's cinematography is sumptuous, using lush textures and visual metaphor to evoke the invisible sense at the film's heart. The film's novelty is exceptional — there is simply nothing else quite like it in tone, subject, or execution. The ending, culminating in a mass orgy and Grenouille's ecstatic self-destruction, is brazenly original and deeply earned. Acting is solid but slightly uneven, with Whishaw's eerily blank Grenouille occasionally limiting emotional engagement in the supporting cast dynamics — the one category that settles just below the film's otherwise exceptional register.