Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)

Released Sept. 14 in Germany, where it's well on its way to hitting a hunky 3 million admissions in its first month, pic has already started its three-month rollout across most of the rest of Europe. First test in an Anglophone territory will be Blighty on Dec. 8; Stateside release is skedded for Dec. 27. Parallel with this visual onslaught, an offscreen narrator (an excellent John Hurt in the English version; veteran thesp Otto Sander in German prints) preserves some of Suskind's irony as he describes Grenouille's growing obsession with "the fleeting world of scent." His olfactory sense becomes so highly tuned that it nullifies all other human qualities, including love, compassion and personal communication.

More than just a killer-thriller or the tale of a man with an exceptional gift, "Perfume" is a skewed love story, of a man who suddenly discovers the "scent of woman" but can't make the jump into real relationships. Wandering in nighttime Paris, Grenouille catches the scent of a young woman selling plums (Karoline Herfurth). Almost accidentally, he strangles her, and then, in one of the film's most powerful sequences, tries to preserve her bodily scent in his memory by sniffing her naked corpse.

Grenouille's opportunity to develop his obsession comes in the form of onetime successful parfumier Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman), whom he persuades to take him on as an apprentice. When Grenouille discovers that human scent can't be bottled, he sets out on his own to Provence, in southern France -- to the town of Grasse, which specializes in enfleurage, extracting the essence of flowers. Joining a firm run by Mme. Arnulfi (German thesp Corinna Harfouch), and becoming obsessed by the virginal scent of local beauty Laura (newcomer Rachel Hurd-Wood), daughter of widowed merchant Antoine Richis (Alan Rickman), he turns to mass murder to produce the ultimate femme-scent cocktail.

Apart from scissoring an episode set in Montpellier, script is extremely faithful to Suskind's book -- indeed, more liberties should have been taken to make the novel work on the screen. During its first hour, prior to Provence, film is entertaining on a visual level, with Uli Hanisch's extraordinary production design and Pierre-Yves Gayraud's lived-in costumes giving a real feel for 18th century Paris without too much exaggeration. But with far too big a chunk of screentime given to Hoffman's unconvincing perf as the charlatan Baldini, pic is slow moving . Despite Hurt's toney voiceover, and all the shots of Grenouille's twitching nose and talk of scent manufacture, there's a limit to how well any film can convey the protag's sensory dilemma.

Film really gets under way in the Grasse half, with the brighter, more colorful vistas, and Grenouille finally deciding to show the world he's not a nobody. With Rickman proving a classy combatant as a father seeking to protect his only child, picture starts to grip in human terms. Only during the yarn's final segment, which plays OK in the book but looks daft onscreen, does "Perfume" really lose its bouquet. Major kudos go to 25-year-old Whishaw, recently seen as Keith Richards in "Stoned," for his half-angel, half-devil perf as Grenouille, a difficult role into which the young British thesp throws himself with conviction. Among the many fine supports, Harfouch seems shortchanged in a part that seems to have suffered from cuts.