Ever wonder what it would be like to have a super power? You know, like a superhero. Ever wanted super-human strength? The ability to fly? Laser beams shooting out of your eyes? Well how about a super sense of smell? In Perfume, Jean-Baptiste is born with an amazing sense of smell. I don’t even know how to describe it other than he’s like a human hound dog. He can smell you coming and going.
Jean-Baptiste lived a hard life during the French Revolution. He was born in a fish market and soon ends up in an orphanage. If you didn’t know, those places weren’t all fun and games. I’d probably have to describe them as hell holes. Anyways, he eventually starts working in a tannery and one day gets to go into town for a delivery. There are all kinds of wonderful smells he’s never encountered before. He eventually smells the most wonderful scent he’s ever encountered, but tragically loses it.
Jean-Baptiste’s next line of work then becomes the perfume industry. He starts learning how to make perfumes in the effort to preserve smells. He wants to recreate that smell he found in town that one day. As you can probably tell from the title, Jean-Baptiste also happens to be a murderer. I don’t want to give the story away though, so I won’t get into that.
This film is a good watch. There is a slight, crazy twist at the end that kind of involves a mass orgy. Don’t really see that one coming. For this reason I won’t be recommending this to a lot of people. It’s not crazy or too revealing…especially after seeing John Cameron Mitchell’s 
Shortbus. If you’ve seen Perfume, we’d love to know what you thought of it. If you liked it, you might want to check out some of Tom Tykwer’s other movies such as Run, Lola, Run or The Princess and the Warrior .
Rating: 
I really liked this movie too. In fact, I was just realizing the other day that I usually don’t write about things on here if I really hated them. There were a lot of good Chinese actors in this film. Ziyi Zhang and Michelle Yeoh, from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Ken Watanabe, from The Last Samurai and Batman Begins, are the only three whose names I recognize. I saw other faces that seemed familiar, but I have no idea what their names are.
This story starts out in pre-WWII Japan. Two little girls are sold by their father and taken into the city. Chiyo is trained to be a geisha and her sister presumably escapes. From here on we follow Chiyo as she trains and eventually becomes one of the ‘most celebrated geisha of Japan’. I don’t mean to sound cheesy here. It really was a very interesting story. I bet the book would be a good read.
When watching this I kept thinking back to other movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or House of Flying Daggers or Hero. I’m not really sure why - maybe because of some of the actors involved. This movie didn’t have some of the amazing color-scenes, but the acting was phenomenal in my opinion. I think Ken Watanabe is great and am really looking forward to seeing him in more movies. Ziyi Zhang and Michelle Yeoh also performed well…again. I have yet to be disappointed.
I really don’t know what to say about this one, so I’ll try and say very little.
If you wanna see the most disturbingly dead-on portrait of the harmful effects—physically, spiritually, and emotionally—of child sexual abuse, go see “Mysterious Skin.” Although in times it is a little too “indy” and has its cheesy acting moments, it still—in the end—gripped me tighter and pulled me more emotionally into its story than any other film of recent memory has. Its combination of extremely disturbing visuals juxtaposed with two very different approaches towards coping with sexual abuse makes for an intimate, harrowing, and unflinching film.
It could very well be the most emotionally affective movie of the year, but maybe that’s just me. All I know is, few other movies have brought me to tears while simultaneously causing me to turn my eyes away from the screen.
I think “Irreversible” was the last movie to make me seriously do that (minus the tears of course). Wow. Remember that one?
Okay, enough said.
Recent Comments