Review of: Perfume:The Story of a Murderer

2/5 (minimum 1)

by Fin on 15 Jan 2007

I seem to be one of the few people who hasn't read the book but this allowed me to come to the film with few expectations. This is just as well because I was seriously disappointed. Many reviewers seemed to have been worried about how the subject of smells could be dealt with on film. This proved no problem for me and I think this aspect of the film was successful. Where it really fell short was in the acting and the directing. The main character was excellent but the two main supporting parts played by Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman were two dimensional jokes. This may be how they were written in the book but they just don't work in the film. As far as the directing was concerned it often felt contrived and aiming for an impact rather than authenticity. The crowd scenes in particular were awful. The “orgy” scene was so over the top that I and many of the other viewers in a packed cinema were laughing. I came away feeling this was at least an hour too long and that a potentially fascinating and serious subject was spoilt by mediocre creative input which ended up giving us a just a piece of silliness.

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Perfume:The Story of a Murderer

Tags: film perfume