Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Ben Whishaw plays Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a boy born with a gift for scent.
After being sent to an orphanage, he is sold to a tannery, from there he meets Guiseppe Baldini one evening when he is delivering skins to him. Guiseppe is a perfumer, suffering from failing sales due to the rise of another perfumers succession with the perfume Amour and Sykie.
Upon entering Guiseppe's home, Jean-Baptiste makes Amour and Sykie for Guiseppe. Much to Guiseppe's amazement, it is the exact same scent. Jean-Baptiste then tells Guiseppe that it is a bad perfume, and that he can make it better and so he does, although Guiseppe does not smell the perfume until after Jean-Baptiste has left. When Guiseppe inhales the perfume it transports his mind to a garden, filled with beautiful flower bouquets and he has a vision of a young and beautiful girl kissing him on the cheek.
The next day Guiseppe buys Jean-Baptiste from the tannery and teaches him all there is to know about capturing essences and how there is 12 essences to make a perfume, that can take a persons mind to paradise.
Jean-Baptiste however is not happy with capturing just flowers, he wants to capture all scents, mainly the scent of people, ever since he smelt the scent from a young girl selling fruit, it has been his mission to find away to capture someones smell. Unsatisfied with his findings that he cannot do it, he grows ill, until Giuseppe writes him journey papers so he can travel to Grasse to learn other ways to capture scent. Guiseppe writes him his papers on condition that Jean-Baptiste gives him formulas for perfumes, and so he does.
On Jean-Baptistes journey to Grasse he discovers a cave, where he resides for a while until he learns he, himself, has no smell. Distressed by this he sets out to carry on his jouney but to also create the most beautiful scent of all time. The perfect essence.
In order to do this, Jean-Baptiste ends up killing a number of girls to reach his desired goal. By taking the oils from their hair and body, he then distils them creating an essence. The beauty of these essences is first shown when Dominic Drewer, a man who has power over Jean-Baptiste at the distillery where he works, goes to order Jean-Baptiste to do something in a bullying manner. Upon smelling the essence his tone changes and he instead asks him politley to complete the job he wanted him to do.
After he collects the final girls essence - the 12 essence - he is captured and sentenced to death. However he still has the perfect perfume with him, and when it is time for him to face his sentence he drops some of the perfume on to himself and then onto a handkerchief. The crowd who originally wanted nothing more than to see Jean-Baptiste suffer and die, all of a sudder adore and worship him and his every move. Even the father of the final girl he murdered, falls to his knees begging for forgiveness before him.
Please note, that if you have not seen this film, it in my opinion, is quite honestly disgusting and vulgar in parts.
Despite the endind, which really is something else entirely. I feel that it shows how scent can change how people percieve someone or something. The people all go from hating Jean-Baptiste to loving him all because of how beautiful he smells. He made the feel love from the scent of beauty.
Grasse by the way, where Jean-Baptiste travels to and commits the murders to create his perfume, is the center of perfumer in France. It is the birthplace of the perfumer industry, and is home to more than 60 perfume companies.
