Perfume (2006)
I was SO excited that Perfume: The Story of a Murderer was finally released to DVD on Tuesday! It was the movie I most wanted to see during the Christmas break, aside from Pan's Labyrinth. Unfortunately it didn't stay around long in the Oscar-season rush.
But I watched it last night with falfax and Michael, and it's even greater than I was expecting. Starring Alan Rickman, Dustin Hoffman, and Rachel Ann Hurd (Peter Pan - 2003), this bestselling novel artistically adapted by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior) was spot on. As a long-time pet project of Stanley Kubrick, the film of Patrick Suskind's novel about an artisan both blessed and cursed with an inhuman ability of scent in the early-mid 18th century France, remained unadapted for a long 20 years. But the wait is worth it! It's imaginative at every turn. It's equally beautifully gorgeous as it is repulsive, poetic as it is jarring.
Rickman and Hoffman shine in this sumptuous grand guignol bouquet (you'll become obsessed with the most overlooked of human senses - smell), and the great variety of locations keeps the energy pulsing within its 2 hr. 18 min. run-time. It reminded me of a heady mixture of Brother of Sleep (1995), The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky (2001), and Hannibal Rising (2006). The ending orgy of 750 extras is as powerful as the much smaller affair in Shortbus (2006). I highly recommend it!