I posted about this in another thread for a book I just finished reading but thought it would be a good thread all by itself:) …I just finished the book a while back it was a detailed thriller!..I am so excited about the upcoming movie the film is going to be great!
Here is the Trailer:
Enjoy
I saw the trailer and thought it looked really good, so when I saw that it was originally a book I immediately put it on hold at the library.
Now I’m just biding my time so I can read it.
The trailer looks amazing and it’ll be a great film…
…but you have to realize, I’m very very shallow, and one of my first thoughts was (besides “Alan Rickman’s voice brain whump, boom, fizzle”): “That’s the girl from Peter Pan?!”
That’s underselling the book considerably, imo. Terrific book which I dreaded being moviefied.
It seemed to me that the book was about being ‘in but not of’ society and how unbearable that was. It seemed to be an existential fantasy rather than thriller, but then I see metaphor in dogshit. 
If any readers on the board havent - try Perfume.
MiM
I absolutely second that (emotion). Really quite a gruelling story, with it’s basis in olfaction making it stand out in my mind as unique.
My main concern in turning it into a film is the representation of scent - are they going to do wispy CGI scent trails wafting in different colours or something? I hope it doesn’t look like the bit when the ghosts escape from the containment system in Ghostbusters. I can’t view the trailer - do you ‘see’ any scent in that?
Never has there been a more perfect application for Smell-o-Vision!
Or maybe a scratch-and-sniff strip like in the 1970s?
Oh! It’s a book! Good, I can ask…
I’ve seen this trailer in the theater several times and each time I have to constrain my eyeballs from rolling back in my head. Now, don’t take that to mean that I have no interest in seeing the movie. When I found out it was directed by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior) my brain was screaming “I AM SO THERE!” and would have if the trailer had been of some guy sitting on a stool reading the phone book. Opening day, I’ll be there, without knowing one more thing about the movie.
However, if the name Tom Tykwer hadn’t been mentioned, my eyes would have rolled so far back in my head they would have ended up in the aisle behind me and the movie would have been put on the “Have to see reviews, if I happen to remember to look them up” list, because the trailer makes the movie look really, REALLY terrible. IMO, obviously.
The things that bother me about the trailer are endless, but first and foremost is something that maybe people who have read the book can ease my mind about.
[spoiler]How does the story get around the fact that the place and the people must have STUNK SO BAD I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like. Everybody had horrific body odor, and the smell of rotting meat, human and animal waste and just general neglect of cleanliness had to have overpowered any delicate or subtle smells. Does this guy not smell BAD smells, is it part of his superpower or what? Why is this book set in a time when stink was so much a part of daily life? I see the trailer and the images make me want to hold my nose lest disgusting odors start wafting from the screen. Gag. Certainly this is adressed right? It can’t possibly be taken for granted that all these nasty smells don’t exist or don’t get in the way of smelling a girl’s “essence.” Eh?
I’m not a stinkophobic. Normally I don’t think about how much people must have smelled when I watch period films, but since this one is ABOUT a boy who can smell and identify delicate and subtle scents (and becomes a serial killer trying to find the essence of woman, it would seem), the whole smell/odor/stink aspect is front and center in my mind, and it bothers me when I watch the trailer. Please tell me this is addressed in the book.[/spoiler]
Equipoise, your spoiler question is indeed much of the entire premise of the book. I can’t recommend it highly enough: it’s so unusual, and excellently translated.
Wow then, that’s very intriguing! Thank you jjimm.
I only saw the trailer once in the theater but I got so excited since I had read the book that I went looking on line for it and the website has all these amazing clips. I am so excited about this. I was so excited once I finished Harry Potter and then got to see the movie its like you visualize something but then getting to see someone elses vision/interpretation is just a whole new thing!
I’m reviving this thread because I don’t see any others discussing the movie, and I finally saw it in the dollar house tonight.
To answer Staggerlee’s question, no they didn’t use any vapor tendrils or other special effects to show the secent wafting except at the very end when . . .
Gernouille uncorks his Ultimate Perfume. Spots of light wash over the gathered crowd’s faces, exactly as if they were reflections off a mirror-ball. In fact they might have done just that – it didn’t have any kind of CGI look about it at all. It’s not really needed because the crowd’s enthusiastic reaction is quite enough to show what is happening.
You do get an awful lot of extreme close-ups of Whishaw’s twitching nostrils, though.
One thing confused the hell out of me, though, and I suspect they might have gotten a reel out of order. Back to the spoiler box.
Towards the end Antoine Richis and Laura have escaped to the inn in the mountains. He’s okaying the placement of her room and --BAM-- Grenouille is delivering a bundle of goatskins to Baldini, duplicates Amor and Psyche to get himself apprenticed, and has Baldini’s lesson about how perfumes have three phases of four scents each, then --BAM-- we’re back to the inn. It took me aback and I was a few moments recognizing Baldini, since he’d been dead for so long. There was a reel change at the second “bam” – I wasn’t paying any attention whether there was one at the first since it caught me by surprise. The weird part is, it would work well either way. As seen, the ‘flashback’ reveals why Grenouille has the rack o’ ampoules, an aha! as to why he was killing so many girls. If it was really meant to be towards the beginning, in chronological order, then you get an oh, no! moment when he packs that rack before walking to Grasse – you know the residents there are in for a tough time.
So, did I see the movie way it was intended, or did the exhibitor fuck up?
I’ve been wanting to read the book since I was a huge Nirvana fan at 16. Their song “Scentless Apprentice” is based on it.
DesertDog, in regards to your spoiler, yeah sounds like the reel was out of order. That scene was definitely earlier in the film.
Great, great book.
What is it about that guy? Like he’s BUTT UGLY! (“COOL ugly,” corrects my wife, because women seem to have qualifiers for such things. shrug I guess it’s like Claudia Black, who is technically homely but my hormones disagree.) My daughters are all crushing on him because of his voice.
This movie was definitely one of the better movies I’ve seen in my life. The descriptive story telling is one of its kind. Don’t even get me started on the cinematogrophy (it was freakin’ amazing). I personally thought that it had a cop-out ending, though.
Thank you, 'Brows. I was thinking it worked better cinematically in order rather than a flashback. That leaves only one question: What’s a perfumer want with goatskins? To make pouches for his bottles, maybe?
IIRC from my reading of the book, 10ish years ago…! The perfumer scents the leather and sends it back.