PERFUME Premiere in Germany
by Andre Soares
The film version of Patrick Süskind’s best-selling novel Das Parfum - Die Geschichte eines Mörders / Perfume, the tale of a twisted 18th-century Frenchman with no body odor but ironically gifted with a freakish olfactory sense, had its world premiere last night, Sept. 7, in Munich.
Directed by Tom Tykwer, Perfume’s English-speaking cast includes Ben Whishaw (as the odorless freak), Dustin Hoffman, and Alan Rickman. Produced by Bernd Eichinger (Der Untergang / Downfall) on a €50m budget, Perfume is supposed to be the most expensive German production to date. (Stanley Kubrick was attached to the project at one point, but found the book "unfilmable.")
Süskind’s novel sold 15 million copies worldwide, thus becoming one of the most successful German literary works in decades. For the enjoyment of the unusual but silly novel — and quite probably the film — disbelief must be completely suspended.
I’m curious to see how the filmmakers have dealt with a massive sex orgy that takes place near the story’s climax (no pun intended). Since this is a German production, sex shouldn’t be a problem — except that Perfume is an English-language production geared to the "international" (read: American) market. That most likely means the sex will have to be considerably toned down. (I’m not sure if a pun was intended here, but the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung said that Perfume "in the end failed to emerge as the orgasm of a film it wanted to be.")
(German-language) Official Perfume site
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Stanley Kubrick found something to be “unfilmable”? That’s sort of like Eric Von Stroheim finding a budget to be far too much.
I have watch this movie Perfume:the story of a murderer, and I may say that the novel is far better than the film. That’s just my opinion of course. But the film was not that bad. Me myself was also anticipating how they will interpret the massive orgy that was in the book^^
Bobby