Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

This is the strange story of a very gifted child called Jean-Baptiste, born to a fishmonger who is put to death for abandoning her child. He grows up in an orphanage before being sold to a tannery in Paris, having honed his sense of smell throughout his upbringing. Whilst on an errand, he becomes enthralled by a woman's scent, and follows her, but he takes her by surprise, and suffocates her to death.

He approaches a perfumer who is behind the times with regards to fashion, and is being outdone by other perfumers. The protégé creates the rival perfume by eye in a matter of moments, stunning the old perfumer, who takes him on as an assistant. Jean-Baptiste wants to be able to capture the scent of things such as glass and even the cat, but the method the perfumer has shown him is unsatisfactory. Jean-Baptiste sets out for Grasse to learn more secrets of the perfume trade.

In Grasse J-B kills 12 women, and 'cooks' them in animal fat to remove their scent, and he distils the oils into perfume ingredients. He then sets off after the daughter of one of Grasse's noble residents, and kills her to extract her scent. He then has the 13 ingredients for the perfect perfume, which he uses to seduce the towns population into believing him to be innocent, (at this point the town's residents have a far fetched mass orgy in the town square [at this point, In my opinion the whole thing became unbelievable, and to a certain extent, laughable.]) Not knowing what to do with the power the perfume exerts, (it's not given him the love and adoration he was after,) he commits suicide, but pouring the remaining perfume over his head, and being ripped to pieces by homeless people in the fish market where he was once born.

I found the film highly entertaining up until the mass orgy where it went a bit awry and ludicrous, but that's dramatic licence for you, but it does mean I only give it 3 stars.