Review – Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

No amount of slick production values can turn this mean little sow’s ear into a silk purse. Here we have the dark “comedic” tale of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a young man who is apparently the Mozart of odors. His superhuman ability to smell things leads him into a quest to make a perfume with the essence of murdered women. After much trial and error, he finally figures out the trick of getting their scent from them, after which he goes on quite a killing spree. Though the production values are solid enough, the script is awful and the cast behind the antihero more than a little weak. Dustin Hoffman in particular turns in a performance so wretched that I was genuinely glad when his house collapsed on top of him (and if that’s a spoiler, it isn’t much of one). Unless one is particularly fond of arty slasher movies with morally-ambiguous endings, the only fun to be had here is the contribution the actors make to the pursuit of the answer to the question, “How many different ways are there to pronounce ‘Grenouille’?” See if desperate