Film a Week Project: Film 9: "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer"

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is based on a book. The original novel, published in 1985 depicts 18th century France, in which an unfortaunte young man, Jean-Baptise Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) has a very special talent.

That talent is a simple one - an extraordinary sense of smell. With this sense of smell, comes motivation, desire, and a single objective.

Just as people wanted to record sounds and images in this period of history, Grenouille quickly learns that he wishes to record scents, and bring them about by way of perfumes.

The film details the boy's childhood, and how he relies on the relationship between scent, memory, and to an extent, the tracking of things - inclusive of people. He starts work as an orphaned child in a leather tannery, where he is first exposed to perfume, the aristocracy, and the disposable income of the French bourgeoisie.

The story of this film is well written (it helps that it is based on a book), but what really did strike me was the cinematography. High levels of contrast in scenes abound, and there's so much beautiful detail embellished in costumes, characters, environments and the props.

From dark and moody streets to sun-drenched fields, there's a dizzying array of visual splendour peppered throughout the film. Almost every frame in the film looks like a painting of that time frame.

The one thing its missing, of course - is the titular scents which our protagonist pursues.

He sidelines a practice of distilling the essence of women, which brings us to the title's film. First attempting to do this with living women, when finding them uncooperative, he seeks out the recently deceased in order to gather ingredients for an ultimate perfume.

There's a deranged criminal mastermind that underpins this narrative, and a certain level of homage played to tales of Jack the Ripper.

What unfolds though is a dramatic, beautiful story that is absolutely delightful visually, especially if you can get your hands on a 4K version of the film.

This is something you should seek out and watch if you like "real" movies.