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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
DreamWorks SKG

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer reviews


6.8

based on 30 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 51 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA 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.

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:	DVD: July 24, 2007 Theatrical: December 29, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	147 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Germany / France / Spain

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...

100

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.

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.

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.

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.

Empire Dan Jolin

The odd conclusion renders it somewhat oblique, but Perfume is a feast for the senses.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Deeply flawed though it may be, Perfume is a challenging motion picture, and one whose impressions are not easily shaken.

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.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Perfume is a pitch-black period epic of squalor and enterprise.

Village Voice Ed Halter

It's a noble experiment in pushing the limits of cinema, but Tykwer never achieves true profundity.

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.

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.

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.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's simultaneously arty, arcane and nasty.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Perfume offers eau de crud.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.8 (out of 10) based on 51 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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.

latakia u gave it a10:
First read the book, then watch the movie. You'll realize how difficult is to make a movie out of this ineffable story. I highly recommend both the book and the movie.

Don S. gave it a3:
This misogynistic, repulsive film is Euro-trash masquerading as art with a little "magic realism" thrown in to impress the pseudo-intellectuals. Yes, I'm talking about you, Mr. Ebert.

Tom G. gave it a9:
I just saw this movie on DVD and It was excellent. I get bored of movies easily because so many are formulaic and predictable. This movie was not. It does demand from the viewer an open mind and a capacious imagination in order to understand and appreciate the movies' trajectory. The ending was brilliant. It required a particularly imaginative understanding of what the power of scent is capable of doing, but it is this that made the bacchanalian love fest credible and the quest transcendent. A unique film that you will either love or hate.

Nikki I. gave it a0:
One of the dumbest movies I have ever seen that tries to be so much more. I must admit that the first hour or so is good, at best, but the ending was so completely absurd and ridiculous I had a hard time just trying to get through it. Its disappointing, as I was told this was a relatively good movie... but it was garbage. Absolute garbage.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer DreamWorks SKG

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
DreamWorks SKG