4 September 2007
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
I haven’t got a lot to say about Perfume: Etc. for a number of reasons — it wasn’t particularly interesting, and I saw it a couple weeks ago. Alas, that it was on the Netflix queue so it deserves: it didn’t really suck. You get to see a supremely surreal Dustin Hoffman: goodness gracious, what were they thinking.
Which is what most people ask of the ending, I think. Personally, it was the only redeemable sequence in the whole movie, just because it was fascinating. I love the outraged posts on forums abound that regale the 
movie for being a serious meditation on a serial killer without a ludicrous body count. But since when did overlong close-ups of rotting fish deserve a label like “serious meditation.” And can anyone in their right mind connect — logically, in terms of this being a serious-minded portrait of a killer — the orgy at the end with what preceded it?
And sure, this is where the real fun of parsing iconography comes from: I can offer all kinds of baloney spewed from my nether-regions about media and serial killer adoration, but even here whatever metaphor you settle would ultimately be so convoluted as to be easily contradicted by another interpretation. And it’s that ambiguity and ambition and misdirection that’s pretty fascinating to watch. You think, as Alan Rickman(‘s character Richis) comes out of his slumber for that final confrontation, that finally you’re going to get something riveting. And it is, as much as it can be. While everyone throws down, he begs forgiveness of his daughter’s murderer. The real dramatic rub of the moment would then have Grenouille ask of Richis his absolution through death, but would that have been cliche? Did the movie side-step that with the extra scene of him being eaten by the gaggle of prostitutes hungry for a sniff? I guess it was necessary to make the point that the village assumed Grenouille actually was innocent, in lieu of the township hanging the others just plainly out of shame (which is, frankly, more interesting).
As I understand it, the movie is quite faithful to the book in regard to this scene. And hooray for that, but can’t you imagine the irony of it all digging a little bit deeper if Grenouille begged Richis to off him, and then they all operate under the assumption that he, too, was a martyr? Isn’t that what Patrick Suskin is after with these scenes (I haven’t read the book)? Instead of him being whisked away as though he never existed (such is the life, if you’re eaten by prostitutes), he could be immortalized. It rings more true, don’t you think, to the orgy? Isn’t that what they’re doing? Making babies? Immortalizing the moment he’s absolved from his wrong doing?
But at that point, it gets away from us. It is, after all, a movie for which the veritable Smell-o-Vision was to be invented. I bet Acme already has a patent on the perfume. It’s how the road runner gets away with it.
This film REEKED (har har). But I love Dustin Hoffman’s Brooklyn Jew accent for the character he plays. He really got into that role, don’t you think?
And those special effects at the end? Amazing. Couldn’t have imagined a whiff of scented subordination emitted from a dirty hanky better myself.