Creating an original, compelling film from scratch is hard enough, but adapting a popular novel into a successful movie brings its own unique set of complications. With the exception of books by authors like Elmore Leonard, who writes terse yet vivid prose that is naturally cinematic, it's impossible to perfectly replicate material from the page to the silver screen. Then there are those pesky books that, for one reason or another are deemed unfilmable,"" like ""Naked Lunch,"" ""A Confederacy of Dunces"" or anything by Kurt Vonnegut or Thomas Pynchon. Patrick Suskind's 1985 cult novel ""Perfume: The Story of Murderer"" was considered one of them after some notable filmmakers""such as Stanley Kubrick""tried and failed to adapt it. But now ""Run Lola Run"" director Tom Tykwer has done it, and while his ""Perfume"" is a visually astounding, well-paced effort, the results are certainly mixed.
""Perfume"" is indeed the story of a murderer""Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a poor, ostracized young man born with an almost supernaturally gifted nose. As John Hurt's storybook narration informs us, Grenouille (up-and-comer Ben Whishaw) is an unsettling outcast born in a rank fish market stall without a scent of his own. He eventually convinces an aging Italian perfumer (Dustin Hoffman) to take him on as an apprentice after proving his nasal
prowess, and goes about learning all he can about the technological preparation and production of scent. Grenouille seeks to create the perfect perfume, which he plans to do by extracting the essences of beautiful young virgins. However, as Grenouille soon learns, women who voluntarily let creepy guys cover them in scent-preserving animal fat are hard to come by, so he has to kill them for the greater good of his ambitious fragrance.
If that sounds bizarre to you, you don't even know the half of it. ""Perfume"" is an unrelentingly dark, disturbing piece of work that asks an audience to follow the exploits of an oddly chaste yet completely unsympathetic serial killer for nearly two and a half hours. But Tykwer and his talented ensemble""which also includes Alan Rickman and Rachel Hurd-Wood""make it work for two hours. Although this is an unusually faithful adaptation, the film deviates from the book in a few irritating ways and doesn't convey some of its key themes (most glaringly, Grenouille's lack of a smell of his own, which spurs him to try and create his Soylent Perfume). Despite all this, Tykwer's crisp pacing and remarkable use of color and sound to visually represent smell overcomes his occasionally annoying tinkering, and makes ""Perfume"" luridly fascinating.
But then the big, lavish climax occurs, and it becomes clear why even a master like Kubrick threw his hands up in defeat: ""Perfume"" is every bit the unfilmable book people said it was. Up until its provocative ending, the book was more of a hard sell than an unfilmable work of literature. Going into detail would spoil the surprise, but when ""Perfume"" turns a pivotal corner in its third act and reveals its big scene, it ventures into the realm of camp, no matter how impressively staged. What occurs in the film's final thirty minutes is directly taken from Suskind's elegant prose, but here it flat out doesn't work. Instead of provoking thought and providing a satisfying conclusion, it merely invites shocked laughter. On paper, the final act was fittingly audacious and challenging, but on the screen, when presented literally, it is utterly ridiculous.
Without the scene, the story ceases to work, so in regard to its inclusion, Tykwer was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. But by following through with his convictions and staying true to the book, Tykwer shot himself in the foot. Despite the distracting changes and an overall lack of Suskind's brilliant black humor, this movie did the book justice, and by doing so, proved without a doubt that it is impossible to adapt. That being said, this film is unlikely to satisfy most of its core audience""even the most adventurous moviegoers unaffiliated with the book will not be able to suspend their disbelief during the grand finale, and fans of Suskind's novel will not appreciate the various omissions and oversimplifications""so ultimately, it is an admirable yet extraordinary folly. It may find a limited audience, but ""Perfume: The Story of a Murderer"" has about as good a chance of attaining mainstream appeal as Smell-O-Vision has of returning to theaters.
