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Wednesday, January 17, 2007
‘Perfume’ would stink if not for the naked ladies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So me and my new lady friend, LaTrea, had to compromise over what movie we wanted to see.
She liked the sound of “Perfume,” and I liked the sound of “The Story of a Murderer,” and since both parts were in the same title, that’s the movie we went to.
Now, I could make all kinds of jokes using words like “sweet” or “sour” or “stinky” or “scent-sational,” but I will leave that to the snooty professional critics. But if “weird” had a smell, that’s what this movie would smell like.
First off, there’s a whole LOT of talk about perfume in the flick — more than anybody that doesn’t work at Bloomingdale’s spritzing ladies’ wrists has any reason to know.
But the murderer part? It’s pretty ho-hum. I mean, Jason and Freddy won’t lose any sleep. The good news is, all the victims are beautiful girls, and the killer likes to strip them when he’s finished, so the movie’s got a whole boatload of ta-ta.
The killer’s name is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, played by a skinny actor named Ben Whishaw, who’s so dirty, it looks like they gave him a farmer with a trowel and a barrel of mud instead of a makeup person.
He gets born in 18th-century Paris in the middle of the super-smelly fish market — and I thought LaTrea was gonna run outside to the lobby, because the movie shows all these close-ups of fish guts and maggots and [human regurgitation]. (LaTrea has a very refined nature due to her many years working as a stewardess, where she’s gotten to know a lot of high-roller types in Business Class.)
But things went OK, because soon the movie was all about flowers and ladies in silk gowns and men wearing wigs. So LaTrea was happy … but I started looking at my watch.
One ugly old guy in the movie has a wig and so much face powder and rouge, he’s a dead ringer for Glenn Close in that “Dangerous Liaisons” movie, only he’s prettier. Turns out it’s Dustin Hoffman as a master perfume-maker, who takes Jean-Baptiste on as an apprentice.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: Jean-Baptiste has an amazing sense of smell and can figure out the ingredients of any perfume just with one whiff of his dirty, runny nose.
He tells Dustin, “Teach me everything you know, and I’ll make you the best perfume in the whole world!”
But the REAL kind of perfume he wants to make is the natural smell of beautiful young ladies. And I guess you’re supposed to forget that nobody ever took a bath in 18th-century France, because I don’t think that’s a natural smell most people would want to dab behind their ears.
Oh yeah, and that reminds me. Halfway through the movie, Jean-Baptiste gets all worked up because he discovers that his own body doesn’t have any kind of smell. Like that’s a BAD thing? I mean, just think how much money he’d save on deodorant.
Anyway, he’s obsessed about trapping the smell of young ladies. So he clubs ‘em in the head like baby seals, strips ‘em down, slathers ‘em with animal fat, and boils down their essence. No, it doesn’t make sense, but the naked ladies kept me awake — even though they’re always laid out with one leg discreetly bent to cover up their [intimate parts].
Jean-Baptiste’s little cottage industry gets harder to do once a rich guy (Alan “Hans Gruber” Rickman) figures out that the unknown serial killer may have set his sights on his lovely teenage daughter (Rachel Hurd-Wood). So Rickman runs away with her into the countryside to keep her safe.
But since Jean-Baptiste has superpowers in his schnoz, that’s about the same thing as wrapping a leg of ham in Saran Wrap, dropping it on the kitchen floor and thinking it’s gonna be safe from your pet basset hound.
Yeah, it’s stupid. But that’s OK, because there’s this insane orgy near the end in the town’s main square. Now, I wish there hadn’t been so many fat and old people macking on each other and rolling naked on the cobblestones, but here’s a big thank you to director Tom Tykwer for the girl-on-girl action.
Oh, and speaking of Tykwer … I forgot to mention that Jean-Baptiste’s first and last victims both have crazy radioactive-red hair. And I remembered that Tykwer is the guy that directed “Run Lola Run.” It starred Franka Potente, who had the same type of DayGlo red dye job. And get this — Tykwer dated her for a few years.
Looks to me like he never got over being dumped by her. And when you learn about that relationship, it makes all those scenes of Jean-Baptiste stalking and killing girls with red hair even creepier — am I right?
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