Perfume: The Story of a Murderer turns Patrick Süskind’s novel about scent into a strange, cold thriller, and mostly gets there. Tom Tykwer directs a cast led by Ben Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man born without a sense of smell who can create fragrances by capturing scents around him. The film builds its case slowly, leaning on atmosphere over plot, and the result is a movie that feels more like a mood board than a story.
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
The Smell That Runs the Film
The central idea is simple: Grenouille can copy any smell he touches. He lives in 18th-century France, and his gift makes him an object of terror and curiosity. Whishaw plays him as a blank slate, a man who moves through the world without warmth, and the film leans on that performance to carry the early hours. The script, adapted from the book, spends a great deal of time establishing the rules of Grenouille’s condition, and the patience pays off in stretches but loses focus elsewhere.
The film’s biggest strength is its use of scent as a visual element. Scenes where Grenouille captures a fragrance are rendered in vivid color, while scenes set in the grimy streets of Paris are drained of life. This contrast works well early on, giving the film a distinct identity that separates it from other period dramas. As the story moves forward, the effect grows less consistent, and the visual tricks start to feel like a trick rather than a tool.
Ben Whishaw and Dustin Hoffman
Whishaw gives a controlled, unnerving performance as Grenouille, and his work carries the film’s quieter stretches. His face is almost expressionless, which fits the character’s nature, but the film asks him to carry weight that the script doesn’t always provide. The supporting cast, led by Dustin Hoffman as a judge and Dustin Hoffman as Grenouille’s mentor, offers solid work, but they’re asked to play secondary figures rather than driving forces.
Hoffman plays a judge who tries to understand Grenouille, and his scenes are among the film’s best. Hoffman plays the role with a quiet dignity that grounds the story’s strangeness, and his presence gives the film a moral center it otherwise lacks. The relationship between the two men is the film’s emotional core, even if the film never fully explores it.
The Plot Drags
The middle stretch drags. The film spends too much time explaining Grenouille’s methods and his desire for fame, and the pacing suffers for it. By the time the story reaches its climax, the film has lost some of its momentum. The ending, which the film builds toward, is a letdown after all the build-up.
The film’s structure is a problem. It moves between past and present without always making the connections clear, and the flashbacks sometimes feel like filler rather than insight. This is a film that knows how to look beautiful but isn’t always sure what to do with that beauty.
A Look at the Running Order
| Scene | Time |
|---|---|
| Opening: Grenouille’s birth | 0:00–0:15 |
| The Judge’s court | 0:15–0:30 |
| Grenouille’s apprenticeship | 0:30–0:45 |
| Capture of the first fragrance | 0:45–0:55 |
| The search for the perfect scent | 0:55–1:20 |
| Climax and resolution | 1:20–1:35 |
The table shows how the film breaks down across its runtime. The middle sections, covering the search for the perfect scent, are where the film loses steam.
What Works and What Doesn’t
The film succeeds in creating a singular world, but it fails to sustain that world over its full length. Here’s a rough breakdown of what lands and what falls flat:
- The opening hour, which sets up Grenouille’s condition, is the film’s strongest section.
- The performances from Whishaw and Hoffman are consistently strong.
- The visual style, especially the contrast between scented and unscented scenes, is striking.
- The middle hours lose focus and momentum.
- The ending feels rushed after a long build-up.
The film’s strengths are real, but they’re unevenly distributed. The moments that work are memorable, but they don’t add up to a complete picture.
A Mixed Verdict
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a film of contrasts. Its ambition is clear, and its visual style is distinctive, but its execution doesn’t always match its ideas. The film is worth seeing for its atmosphere and its lead performance, but it doesn’t hold together as a complete story.
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