Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (film)

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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Directed by	Tom Tykwer
Produced by	Bernd Eichinger
Written by	Patrick Süskind (novel) Andrew Birkin Bernd Eichinger
Starring	Ben Whishaw Dustin Hoffman Alan Rickman Rachel Hurd-Wood
Distributed by	DreamWorks Pictures (USA) Constantin Film (Germany) Pathé (UK)
Release date(s)	September 14, 2006 (Germany)
Running time	147 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 2006 film directed by Tom Tykwer.

1 Synopsis
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 Trivia
5 External links

[edit] Synopsis

See: Perfume (book)

The movie contains the same plot elements of the book, though due to the length of the book, not all aspects will be included in the film version. The plot revolves around a young man who has an excellent sense of smell, which drives him to murder.

[edit] Cast

Ben Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the young man without a scent of his own but a strong sense of smell. He is anti-social and obsessive.

Dustin Hoffman as Giuseppe Baldini, the man who employs Grenouille at his shop of perfume. He teaches Grenouille how to capture smells and create perfume.

Alan Rickman as Antoine Richis, the father of Laura. He fears for his daughter's safety but finds it hard to protect her.

Rachel Hurd-Wood as Laura Richis, the daughter of the powerful Richis and the subject of Grenouille's attention. Her scent, he feels, will complete his collection

[edit] Reception

As of October 2006, the film had received mostly positive reviews by critics. Reuters described the movie as "visually lush, fast-moving story," stating as well that the director "has a sure sense of spectacle, and despite its faults the movie maintains its queasy grip."

A blogger on blogcritic.com described the film by saying that "it is the story of love and its crushingly overwhelming power." The music, acting, set design and cinematography have been praised in many reviews.

[edit] Trivia

Stanley Kubrick once said that the book based on was unfilmable.
Ridley Scott was attached to the project years before production finally began. Tim Burton was also considered as director.
Bernd Eichinger wanted to make this movie for years but Patrick Süskind refused to sell the movie rights. Only in 2001 he did so and received approx. 10 Million Euros.
Most expensive German movie ever made (as of 2006).
Héloïse Adam auditioned for the part of Madame Arnulfi.
Because the music was begun at the same time as the writing of the screenplay, initial versions of the music were available quite early in production, allowing the nearly unprecedented ability of playing the soundtrack on-set during filming of the movie. This enabled Whishaw to draw from the music to create a more highly-nuanced performance.