In an effort to capture this elixir, he follows her to the room where she lives. Desperately obsessed with this aroma, ney, fragrant elixir, Jean-Baptiste follows her, approaches the woman, stops her, inhaling her very essence.

The scent of plums mingled with the essence of the young woman who sells them is intoxicating. Out on an errand one late Paris night, Grenouille finds himself besotted with a scent wafting from a red-headed girl selling plums. With her eye on the gold, Jean-Baptiste soon finds himself as an apprentice in a tannery run by the evilly fetid looking Grimal. Gaillard is not one to let an opportunity pass her by. With his incredible olfactory abilities, he is able to nose out rotting fish or the richest perfumes with just a whiff describing in detail the composition and element of each aroma. It isn’t long before those who know Jean-Baptiste realize there is something different about him.

His cries heard by a customer, Jean-Baptiste is rescued from certain death and placed into an orphanage under the guiding hand of the money-grubbing insensitive Mme. Abandoned by his mother who left him for dead immediately on giving birth, it is the very fetid malodorous rank of the market and its patrons and inhabitants that stirred the newborn to life. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born into poverty in the rank, stench-filled air of an 18 th Century Parisian fish market. What a glorious surprise on experiencing what may be a late Oscar contender - PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER.īased on the 1985 Patrick Süskind novel, 'Das Parfum: Die Geschichte eines Moerders', director Tom Twyker not only realizes the story on film, but surpasses the incredible sensory experience of the written word, synergistically combining the elements of sight and smell resulting in a full-bodied aromatic masterpiece.

My one overall gripe about films adapted fro m books has always been, and typically with very few exceptions, that the film not only fails to do justice to the printed word on which it is based but more often than not, often ravages and annihilates the integrity, overall meaning and imaginative beauty of the book itself. Santa Monica Observer, Inc., Beacon-Times, Inc., Columbus-Register, Inc., and a Host of Others Film Critic to the Culver City Observer and over 132 Publications Worldwide including: The Observer, Inc., John Schimmenti, Inc., CCN, Inc.,

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