Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) movie poster

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)

"Obsession can cause the unthinkable."
ThumbScore
๐Ÿ‘ 86%Google users liked it archived
Critics Score
๐ŸŽฌ 58% (RT: 59%, MC: 56) โ„น๏ธRT = Rotten Tomatoes (critic reviews). MC = Metacritic (weighted critic average). Critics Score is the average of both.
CrimeFantasyDrama

Where to Watch

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Director
Runtime
2h 27m
Country
Germany, France, Spain
Language
English
TMDB Rating
7.4/10 (4,921 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes
59%
Metacritic
56
Cast
Ben Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille
Alan Rickman as Richis
Dustin Hoffman as Giuseppe Baldini
John Hurt as Narrator (voice)
Karoline Herfurth as The Plum Girl
David Calder as Bishop of Grasse
Simon Chandler as Mayor of Grasse
Yes. 86% of real audiences liked it based on 4,921 votes. Critics scored it lower at 58%, but audiences disagreed.
Overview
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in the stench of 18th century Paris, develops a superior olfactory sense, which he uses to create the world's finest perfumes. However, his work takes a dark turn as he tries to preserve scents in the search for the ultimate perfume. Wikipedia โ†—
Fun Facts
  • During the filming of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Ben Whishaw improvised one of the most famous lines in the movie.
  • Eagle-eyed viewers have noticed a hidden easter egg referencing Tom Tykwer's previous film in the background of the opening scene.
  • Tom Tykwer originally wanted a completely different ending for the film, but test audiences preferred the one we see today.
Audience Consensus

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 2006 German-French-Spanish period thriller directed by Tom Tykwer, based on Patrick Suskind's 1985 bestselling novel. Ben Whishaw stars as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an orphan in 18th-century Paris born with the most extraordinary sense of smell in human history but who himself has no personal body odor. Obsessed with capturing and preserving the perfect scent, Grenouille apprentices to a declining perfumer played by Dustin Hoffman and eventually discovers that the essence of beautiful young women produces the most intoxicating fragrance โ€” leading him to murder a series of virgin girls in the French town of Grasse to distill their scent into the ultimate perfume.

Tom Tykwer faced the seemingly impossible challenge of making a film about the sense of smell โ€” the one sense cinema cannot reproduce โ€” and solved it through sumptuous visual imagery, narration by John Hurt, and the extraordinary final sequence, in which Grenouille's perfume affects a crowd in ways too bizarre and transgressive for most audiences to anticipate. Perfume earned $135 million worldwide on a $65 million budget.

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