MOVIE REVIEW

by LuLu LaRue

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

SPOILER ALERT! I am going to summarize this entire movie, so if you are planning to see it and you enjoy discovering a story as it is told, you should now read another post on Lost Blueprint.

This movie is about this guy with bionic smellovision. He can smell mushy yellow fruit from miles away, although he's in Europe, so maybe he's smelling fruit from hundreds of hectometers away. Also, it's 18th century France, so everyone has really dirty fingernails and a passion for stockings and shoes with enormous buckles.

So one day he freaks out in Paris. (There's been a bunch of stuff up to this point, like his whole childhood, but really what you need to know is that there were maggots and nothing smelled good and most people that bionic smellovision dude spent time with had really bad teeth. And also, they died.)

So there's lots of smells in Paris, many of which are good, particularly this yellow fruit smell, which leads him to the first of many milk-skinned girls with saucer-shaped eyes and gloriously untangled red hair. He kills her. Then he sniffs her passionately. This is meaningful for him because of the whole bionic smellovision thing he's got going.

So then he hooks up with Dustin Hoffman who is wearing way too much white face powder and they make perfume but bionic smellovision dude kills the cat by trying to distill it and so then he goes off to Grass, which may be in Italy or possibly still France, I'm not sure, everyone was speaking English and I got confused. Was everyone speaking English in 18th century Europe? Does this mean America's current foreign policy is less invasive today than it was then?

Anyway, in Grass, bionic smellovision dude starts killing virgin women because apparently dead virgin women smell really good, especially when covered in animal fat and wrapped in cheesecloth.

Then he gets busted and he shows up for his execution in a blue, velour suit and, in keeping with the apparent style of English-speaking, 18th century France, a pair of shoes with enormous buckles.

There is a crowd waiting for him. They break into a spontaneous orgy. They're none too proud of themselves afterward. Bionic smellovision dude then walks to Paris (so, evidently, he was never in Italy, I don't know why I thought that, maybe the shoes?) where he toodles over to the alley of his birth, running into a crowd of street urchins warming themselves by a fire, who all take a long look at him then subsequently eat him. I am not making this up.

I think there was some business with a particularly aromatic handkerchief, which may or may not have possessed magical qualities.

So, to recap: Speak French in France, avoid shoes with enormous buckles, stay away from the alley in which you were born unless you prefer to be eaten, and I don't really know what to do with that whole orgy thing.