Carleen's Blog

Rainy Saturday afternoon with a cracker of a cold. Great place to go and relax with no effort except to watch the wonder of film. This weeks movie: Perfume. Based on the best selling novel “Perfume. The story of a murderer” written by German, Patrick Suskind. Must say I never knew it was a novel so I’m keen to read this now. The movie is set in 18th century France opening in the squallid, overwhelming stench of the Paris fish markets where Jean-Baptiste Grenouille comes into the world. Even at birth you see that this child has a special drive to live and a sense of smell that is already developing. Orphaned not long after birth Jean-Baptiste continues to explore and develop his gift to the detriment of social skills and limited speech. Eventually he is sold into a tannery where this takes him to see the wonders of perfumerys in Paris. He then becomes fasinated with the natural fragrance of a particular beautiful young women of which he inadvertantly kills in his desire to languish in her scent. As her scent dissipates with the fading warmth of her body this propels Jean-Baptiste forward in his savant-like single mindedness into the world of perfume determined to learn the secrets of this craft, wishing to learn how to capture the scent of all things. If he can capture the scent of all things, then never again would he lose such a wonderous frangrance as hers. Finally he discovers the secret and begins his murderous ramage, no compassion, no realisation of his victims as being human, increasingly possessed with the determination to create the ultimate perfume. Never before have I experienced a movie that could so intensely convey “smell” through the art of film. A movie that provides a clear understanding of a characters thoughts or motivations without speech. One scene that clearly stands out as an example is when Jean-Baptiste realises that the deceased young ladies scent is fading. The building frustration he has and the reason behind his angst is so clear yet not one word was spoken. This movie disturbed me in many ways next continues to fasinate me as I cycle back through the scenes. The use of intense close ups are often disturbing due to the subject but this effect is also used on stunning visuals such as intense red hair, white skin, delicate droplets of oil. The mere fact that I have been writing this review for the past hour surely tells me that this movie stands out. Would I see it again. Possibly not, however I will read the book and will continue to ponder the images and story. My rating: 7.6
Main character connection – although you never identify with Jean-Baptiste that is because he is almost inhuman, this was incredibly believable (9)
Supporting characters – many of them are all stunning especially Alan Rickman (7)
Location – from the putrid streets of Paris to the lush and colourful location of Grasse in Provence, all incredible (8)
Music score – perfect especially when creating his perfumes (8)
Believability – disturbingly so (7)
Intelligence factor – (7)

Steve and I can’t see to come to a consensus on this one. I really enjoyed it, on the edge of my seat the whole time, really drawn into the movie. However, we have since decided that we need to come up with a number of categories then get the average across these. Why? Because I seem to give a great rating to all movies even though there may be some aspects to it that I didn’t like. For example, the thriller content was great, the lead character believable but distant therefore a connection wasn’t really made. The other characters were non impacting even though there were some great celebs involved in the project. So the categories will be: Main character connection, supporting characters, location, music score, believability, intelligence factor. So here we go – Main character (6), supporting characters (3), location (5) loved seeing the different aspects of New Orleans, Music (1) can hardly remember any at all, believability (5) the idea was great but didn’t go into enough and follow the technology enough to get totally involved in it, seemed like it wasn’t a big part of the move, intelligence factor (4). Giving this movie a total score of 4 out of 10.

I must say that I probably hadn’t read the blurb on this movie well before I went nor seen a trailer for it. I thought it was going to be a action thriller. It would fit into neither category. At this stage I am still pondering over this movie even now at 5 days out from it. This has to be the longest time I have bothered thinking over a movie so at least this is a good sign. Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt, although in the movie, weren’t the core focus. The movie revolves around 4 groups of people or individuals and how one incident affects their lives in differing ways even though they are in different parts of the world. The more I think about it the more I like the idea of the story but it left me rather depressed purely because of the connections made with the characters. This again, is also a good result as it means they were incredibly believable. I also walked away being more self aware of how judging a situation without really listening (with the ears and eyes) to the differences be it cultural/physical/language, can lead down a path of misdirection. While still mulling over it, at this stage I would give it 7 stars out of 10.