Perfume (2006)

Perfume is a beautiful looking film, most closely resembling a feature length Stella Artois advert. In fact Stella should consider a promotion where they bundle copies of the movie with 24 packs, along with instructions to start watching and drinking about 2 and a half hours before a big match.

It would perfectly combine their quaint French chocolate box visuals with Stellas delightful reputation for causing women to be on the receiving end of male fists. As a bonus consumers get blind drunk, occasionally see some tits and are left snorting with rage by the end. The perfect primer for an afternoon of shouting at overpaid logo clad twats and punching each other in the face.

The film itself starts well enough - an unlikeable, spazzy, French Norman Wisdom is born with a supersonic sense of smell. He proceeds to have a difficult youth, get sold to a workhouse and then blunder about until he accidentally kills a girl while trying to sniff her. Then he meets fading perfume expert, Italian Dustin Hoffman. Hoffmans character is Italian only in name, his accent here ranging from not there to just shit.


The great Hoffmannini proceeds to teach our bumbling, girl suffocating, corpse sniffling protagonist about perfume theory.

He explains the top note; the first impression of a perfume, the scents detected upon application. He explains the heart note; the mellow core of scents which hit minutes later and form the main body of the perfume. Then he explains the base note, bringing depth and solidity, whose scents are detected 30 minutes after application but can linger for days.

Finally he says that each of these notes are made of 4 scents making 12 unique notes that combine to create a perfume. He goes on to tell of a legendary, perfect perfume that contains 13 notes. Upon learning a way to capture and render the scent of almost anything our 'hero' begins the search for his own ultimate scent.

Does he collect the scent of a summers day? The scent of the night sky with someone you love? The scent of a honey bees post-sting regret? Perhaps the scent of the colour blue? No.

He collects the scent of pretty girls.


Fair enough, most of them smell quite nice.

Except he shaves them first. Even their heads.

After he's killed them.

Why can't he collect their smell while they're alive? Who cares? Not the writer or director. If the girls were presented with the option of death or being coated a bit of fat for a few hours - they'd probably choose the latter. Since they aren't we must follow his gurning reign of sniff-based head-clonking terror. Eventually he culls, shaves and smears his way through enough hot girls to create his wonder scent.

But almost as soon as the perfume is complete he is captured... and then things get a bit weird.

Turns out that he has somehow brewed a perfume of pure love and so he literally gets away with murder - splashing a bit of it about at his execution gets him an immediate pardon and the unadulterated love of the crowd. As the heart note hits the thousand strong crowd they are consumed with desire, stripping naked and engaging in a full on writhing orgy in the town square. The base note seems to then affect a sort of opiate induced cuddle coma on the crowd but by now our hero is long gone. But that's not the weird bit.


After all this, killing, mixing, collecting, concocting and perfecting what does our hero do? He returns to where he was born, uncorks the bottle and tips the entire contents of his lifes work all over himself. This attracts all the beggars in the local area toward him and then they obviously just eat him.

Sorry, did I say 'obviously' because what I actually said when I saw it was 'WHAT?' followed more loudly by 'WHAT THE FUCK?' followed by 'Ermm rewind it a sec' followed by 'What the FUCK?' again. But no they definitely just eat him.

If this film were a perfume the top note would be excitement and anticipation. The heart note would be humorous confusion and the base note would be violent anger and regret.

A lot like drinking a box of Stella.