Perfume

Perfume (2006, Tom Tykwer)
Tom Tykwer definitely has a sense for audio and for visuals. At the opening of his film, he intersperses snippets of dead fish being slopped on the street, villagers vomiting, and pigs being gutted. At first I figured he was interested primarily in putting forth disgust to the audience, as if that was something desirable. And then there's a scene where an orphan baby is almost killed by older children, who smother the baby with a straw pillow before getting caught. The disgust I felt in these scenes almost made me quit watching. But while I resent that way of generating effect, it does allow Tykwer to set up his world: a rotting, ugly Europe and a child no one cares about. For a movie about a perfumer, and a boy who obsesses over it as if it's the only thing that makes life worth living, Tykwer makes a solid point.

Not only does Tykwer sustain interest in his storytelling for two-and-a-half hours, but he does so at times with a talent for sweeping awe, successfully passing on the feeling of experiencing a new sense, and the desire to make beautiful things.

As far as serial killer movies go, Tykwer's film is not "Seven" or "The Silence of the Lambs." We're not reacting to the gory genius of a Lecter character nor to the police thrills of Fincher's investigations. "Perfume" is about a character who is without; his killings are a twofold tragedy: he must kill to feel alive, to "preserve" love via the only thing he feels gives his life meaning, his extraordinary sense of smell. (And even though I don't think "Perfume" aims to be "realistic" about serial killing, I imagine most serial killers would sympathize with the "need" to kill.)

Like a less precious Peter Greenaway, Tykwer's film is closer to a sensual tragedy than a thriller. It may also be the ultimate depiction of fetishism, seeing people not as people but as a series of parts and sensations. Tykwer does bring home the horror of killing -- particularly in one exchange between Grenouille (an amazing, mostly worldless Ben Whishaw) and his most sought-after prize -- but through poetics (a soprano on the soundtrack, a flash of searing light) rather than grungy awfulness. His glorious, surreal ending is a sequence about bringing ecstasy to a terrified, filthy world, and it's the kind of balls-out filmmaking we're used to expecting only from the European art masters from decades ago.