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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 54 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Foreign | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Andrew Birkin
Bernd Eichinger
Tom Tykwer
Patrick Süskind (novel Das Parfum)
Directed by: Tom Tykwer
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 29, 2006
DVD: July 24, 2007
Running Time: 147 minutes, Color
Origin: Germany / France / Spain
Summary
RATING: R for aberrant behavior involving nudity, violence, sexuality, and disturbing images
Starring Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman, Rachel Hurd-Wood, and John Hurt
Based on Patrick Suskind's best-selling novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is set in Paris and revolves around an eccentric 18th century murderer with an extraordinary sense of smell.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Heaven Run Lola Run The Princess and the Warrior Winter Sleepers
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
This is a dark, dark, dark film, focused on an obsession so complete and lonely it shuts out all other human experience. You may not savor it, but you will not stop watching it, in horror and fascination.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Most horror movies try to show us the man inside the monster, so we'll empathize with his moral dilemmas or feel his suffering. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer shows us a man who is all monster, whose colossal amorality makes him a potential Messiah or menace to humanity.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
Whishaw's oddly charismatic performance makes the despicable Grenouille into an almost sympathetic antihero. The rather astonishing finale will likely have audiences either howling in derision or ardently dissecting afterward. And it must have given the bluenoses at the MPAA fits.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The film is downright repulsive in places, and otherwise pushes the envelope for an art film, but it's a dazzling piece of filmmaking that wins us over with its boldness and artistry.
Read Full Review >Empire Dan Jolin
The odd conclusion renders it somewhat oblique, but Perfume is a feast for the senses.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
Tykwer makes of all this murder and madness a concoction of improbable beauty and rare artistry. "Perfume" is not just the finest film of his career but easily one of the past year's most accomplished.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It is to director Tykwer's credit that, although you never come close to understanding Jean-Baptiste, you don't turn your nose up at him, either.
Read Full Review >Premiere Ethan Alter
Perfume is sure to annoy as many moviegoers as it entertains, but at least even the naysayers would find it difficult to argue that film is nothing if not a departure from the ordinary.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
This is a crazy, gorgeous, disturbing, darkly comic horror story about an early-18th-century Frenchman born in a Paris fish market without any odor of his own but with a sense of smell that would make a pack of bloodhounds wail with envy.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, crosses over from thriller into magic realism for a lavishly staged climax that's a bit much.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Perfume misses some of the subtler base notes of Süskind's creepier, more self-aware original, but Whishaw and Tykwer blend the movie into something quite heady in its own bottle.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Bernard Besserglik
Long regarded as unfilmable, Patrick Suskind's 1985 novel "Perfume" has finally reached the screen in a blockbuster production that succeeds reasonably well in achieving what many said was beyond the scope of cinema: conveying the world of scent and smell.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
The seductive, sensory prose of Patrick Suskind's bestseller, "Perfume," reaches the screen with loads of visual panache but only intermittent magic.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
A memorable and outrageous movie, but one more likely to be remembered as a massive folly than a whopping success.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Deeply flawed though it may be, Perfume is a challenging motion picture, and one whose impressions are not easily shaken.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The film, though admirably ambitious, is resolutely earthbound, mired in ick and slime and never more wooden than in the delirious climax.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Perfume is a pitch-black period epic of squalor and enterprise.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Ed Halter
It's a noble experiment in pushing the limits of cinema, but Tykwer never achieves true profundity.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Perfume is ultimately an unmistakable failure, but there's a strange majesty to its epic overreaching. It can be faulted for many things, but not for lacking the courage of its convictions.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Weaves a sensual spell of extraordinary delicacy, then sustains it -- up to a point.
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and cowriters Andrew Birkin and Bernd Eichinger preserve some of the novel's storytelling flair, and Dustin Hoffman does a swell turn as the antihero's Italian mentor. But despite a fairly spectacular climax, the material's generic limitations eventually catch up with the plot.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
By the time Perfume arrives at its ridiculous mass orgy, staged at the gallows where Grenouille is supposed to meet his end, you really would rather see him meet his end than endure a ridiculous mass orgy.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jennie Punter
While Tom Tykwer's lavish and lively screen adaptation of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is certainly not a stinker, there is something decidedly off about it.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
There are sniff movies and there are snuff movies, but Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is both. It has the bouquet of balm and blood. Imagine "Fragrance of the Lambs."
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Tykwer's camera can assault the audience with the rankest of imagery, but not even once does it come close to distilling the actual aroma of the abattoir that was 18th-century France. And for that, I suppose, we should all be thankful.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
What's missing is less a sense of the protagonist's inner nose (which is very well-trammeled) as a sense of his inner life, motivation or desire.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Try as it might to be refined and provocative, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer never rises above the pedestrian creepiness of its conceit.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
This isn't pleasant to watch. Neither is it amusing, intellectually engaging, whimsically fascinating, coldly satirical or painfully poignant, though at any given moment in this erratic film director Tom Tykwer might be trying for one of these conflicting tones.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 54 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jochen D. gave it a10:
One of the best films ever made. Great direction and cinemathography, magnificent decors, great performances, great music, ... Tom Tykwer did what Stanley Kubrick found impossible: he adapted Suskind's wonderful novel to a fantastic movie. An outstanding masterpiece.
Maan J. gave it an8:
Great, creative and tasty movie. I recommend to be watched clearly with deep imaginary.
James L. gave it a3:
Roger Ebert is plain senile. The movie is so bad.
Matt B. gave it a10:
Stunning. Ignore the ignorant criticisms....a faithful adaptation of the masterpiece book. It's very much a satire about greed and desire, rather than the mysoginism that some have incorrectly suggested.
Amy R. gave it a3:
One of the more disturbing, creepy movies I've ever seen, and I don't mean that in a good way. The plot point on which everything turns is so repulsive, offensive to women and humanity in general, as to be without redemption. The San Francisco newspaper sums it up nicely--this film is nothing it aspires to be, and utterly revolting in its attempts.
John M. gave it a10:
Easily in the top five best movies I've seen, and probably my new favorite movie. Extremely dark, creative, and captivating.
Janet C. gave it a0:
Absolutely delighted to see this panned by so many reputable publications like the NY Times; a review I agree with 100%. This film is absolutely ABHORRENT. It is a completely vacuous, yet insidious story which sees a man GLORIFIED for his destruction of women. It is misogynistic in the extreme. I was actually so revolted I can scarcely express it to you. It may be well shot, but that just emphasises how pretentious and self-satisfied it is. Avoid this filth.
