The Gospel According to Prisco

You see a cover with Alan Rickman on it, you think to yourself, this is probably going to be a good movie.  I mean, Alan Rickman, how can you go wrong?  Seriously.  Even the movie Blow Dry is retardedly quirky with that hit or miss Josh Hartnett.  We know you aren’t hurting for roles.  We know you aren’t hurting for money.  But, this?  THIS?  Alan.  For shame.

I’m just going to go ahead and get his horrifying pun out of my system: Perfume  stinks.  There.  Now we all feel a little better. 

 Run Lola Runis among my favorite films.  Easily breaching the top ten.  So when I heard Tom Tykwer was going to do another film, I was excited.  And then I found out it was this film.  Hmmmm.  Yeah.

Perfume is the story of a boy who has the gift of perfect scent.  He uses his nose, like a Tale of Two Cities Toucan Sam, to create the perfect scent.  Because, you know, France stinks.  Really bad.  And so, while sniffing a girl he sees on the street, he accidentally snuffs her.  Yep.  You heard me.  Grenouille, or The Schnoz as I shall refer to him heretoforeward (it’s a word.  cause i fucking said so.  no you shut up), SNIFFS HER.  A random girl on the street.  Then he unintentionally smothers her.  And then, HE SNIFFS HER AGAIN.  He strips her naked and fucking sniffs her.  It’s a nose rape.  I’ve never seen one before, and God willing and pass the ammo, I will never again.  But yeah….he essentially nose rapes her naked corpse.  I guess it’s some sort of nostronecrophilia.   That is officially a word.

And thus becomes his long career as a serial killer in attempt to craft the legendary perfect scent.  Apparently, by basting the ladies in animal fat cream and scraping them clean, he can render the fat and capture the essence of lady.  And that’s going to get you through for well over 2 hours.  Yup. 

This nightmare journey features some of the worst acting I have ever had the misfortune of seeing on screen.  The young lad playing El Schnoz looks like some kind of mongoloid Hayden Christensen, and has about one drop the acting talent.  (And if you watch Shattered Glass you know he actually can act.)  There are a bunch of ladies in it, but their primary function seems to be to get naked and/or murdered.  Which, hey, that’s a resume builder, I reckon.  The biggest sinner in the entire flick is Dustin Hoffman, who somehow channels the spirit of Harvey Keitel in The Last Temptation of Christ. I think Dustin Hoffman has pretty much come to the decision he’s just going to ride out the reputation garnered by the early part of his career, and just collect paychecks.  He’s sporting this unbelieveable attempt at an accent that sounds like Ratzo Rizzo trying out for the Camden River Shakespeare Festival.  It’s horrendous.  

Alan Rickman is awesome.  Because he always is.  Even though he phones in this performance, he’s still outstanding.  It’s not his fault someone put him in this.  I’m sure he saw the potential in young Thomas Tykwer, and thought, this man is going places.  Unfortunately, that place is stark raving insane. For two hours, we watch this mutant, uninteresting, wooden El Schnoz sniff everything in sight.  Then he kills a bunch of ladies, strips them naked, and bastes them with a big old animal fat lotion.  It’s like watching some sort of Food Network porno.  Puts a whole new meaning to 30 Minute Meals.

We start the movie with El Schnoz captured and enshackled, and the crowd wants him dead.  But since he unlocks the magic of the secret scent, and get to move to the next level of Scientology, he uncorks the perfume, and the crowd magically loves him.  I wish they had gone with their original plan of crucifying him and breaking all of his limbs with an iron rod.  Instead, it breaks out into spontaneous orgy.  Which I guess is a way to end a movie.

It’s virtually impossible to make perfume interesting for an hour, even with the whole serial killer aspect.  Because most of the movie is about the obsessiveness of El Schnoz, and frankly, he’s just not that interesting.  Even when he kills off people it’s boring.  And none of the actors are particularly enjoyable to watch.  It’s hard to expect us to follow a story when it runs so long and so languid.  It’s so many closeups of nostrils sniffing and people stirring and mixing.  It’s like someone tried to take a montage and make a film out of it.

There’s artistry buried beneath this picture, but it’s just lost on the drabbery of the scene pieces.  It reminded me a lot Brotherhood of the Wolf which could have been so much stronger.  When people kicked ass, it was fucking awesome.  But there was about 8 minutes of fighting in a two hour movie.  I understand, they are weaving a visual poem, but stop packaging it like fucking Ong-Bak - The Thai Warrior.  With this, you go in hearing the word murderer and thinking, alright, this oughta be interest.  But the only thing that gets murdered is two plus hours of your life. 

I’m a little disappointed in you, Tom Tykwer.  For your second effort (I’m sure an IMDB search will show that he has done other things, but I’m talking FOR REAL EFFORT), it’s a poor follow-up.  Learn from this David Gordon Green.  All the Real Girls was a good movie.  Snow Angels better live up to my expectations.