Scent of a Woman
How do I put this? Where do I start?
Hrrrm. I went to see ‘Perfume’ on Wednesday night. Decent sounding cast - John Hurt, Alan Rickman, Dustin Hoffman and relative newcomers Ben Whishaw and Rachel Hurd-Wood. I read the book a few years ago but couldn’t remember much of the plot except that it involved perfume and murder. As I remembered it the book was a wonderful maelstrom of images from 18th century France, ably written from the perspective of one man’s excellent nose.
It is one thing to write the image of a putrid fish market, or an acidic tannery as experienced through scent, it is quite another to film it. Long lingering shots of Grenouille (Whishaw) sniffing the air. Lurid - almost lascivious - camera shots that linger over nostrils. Macro zooms up the adenoids. The human nose is not an attractive body part, especially when it is 10 foot tall. From the opening scene of Grenouille’s birth where his mother pops him out (literally) and pushes him into a rotting pile of fish guts and garbage the film is drenched with the directors attempts to instill the idea of Smell-o-vision into the tale.
The respected cast does the film no favours either. John Hurt is the narrator and halfway through I wondered how he had gotten himself involved in such a pile. Ditto Alan Rickman. And as for Hoffman, well… Where in Gods name he got that laughable ‘Italian’ accent is anyone’s guess. It veers from completely unintelligable to Soprano-esque. At times he just speaks with his normal accent which makes it even more jarring when he suddenly appears to remember he is supposed to be Italian and throws a ‘Basta! Basta!’ into the dialogue.
The plot is good, the murders horrible and the scenery spectacular. I was - despite the critisicms - rather enjoying the movie and then suddenly the director threw in a mass orgy scene using out-takes from Caligula. The over-long slo-mo ‘wandering the back alleys’ scenes complete with OUR LADY OF SOUNDTRACK SORROW* were er, over-long.
Worth going to see if you’ve read the book. Not one you’d go back to again, and I’d imagine it won’t translate well to DVD.
2 thumbs hovering somewhere near the middle, tending downwards.
*Borrowed from Cleo at Movies in 15 minutes.
Sounds sucktacular. I realise that it’s one of the senses, and in my mind plays a huge part in my memories, but I hate when visual mediums try to express the smell of things. It’s even more frustrating if they do it a play. Some character will say, “What’s that smell?”, and I’m left to think: “Well, it’s the musty odor of several hundred people packed into an old building, mixed with the cleaning products that were half-heartedly used this morning and the air-conditioning system and…”
By the time I return to the action of the play I find I’ve missed quite a bit.
Comment by Chris — January 13, 2007 @ 1:47 pm