basedonthenovel

Perfume (Director: Tom Tykwer): Based upon the bestselling novel by Patrick Suskind, Perfume certainly sounded intriguing. In 18th-century France, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is born with a uniquely keen sense of smell. But as the orphaned son of a fishwife, he grows up illiterate and unable to articulate his gift and the overwhelming desire it creates in him to preserve scent, especially the scent of beautiful young women. Before long, he’s become a sociopathic serial killer in his pursuit of the perfect perfume. Tykwer, known for the kinetic and economical thriller Run Lola Run takes the exact opposite approach here, stretching the film out to an excruciating 147 minutes. To make matters worse, Perfume’s episodic structure means that characters introduced early in the film play their parts and then disappear forever (and I’m not just talking about the victims of our serial killer). Worst of all, the film is burdened with a ponderous voiceover, articulating all that Grenouille cannot, and making it clear that this story functioned much better as a book. Having someone offscreen tell us about Grenouille’s inner monologue fails to turn him into a real character, never mind one for whom we’d feel any sympathy.

In contrast to Whishaw’s almost autistic performance as Grenouille, Dustin Hoffman (as an Italian perfumier who teaches Grenouille his art) and Alan Rickman (as a nobleman whose beautiful daughter is a target of the killer) wildly overplay their characters, especially Hoffman. The portrayals of the separate classes in French society is almost cartoonish, with the foppish nobles lounging about in their powdered wigs while Grenouille carries out his grim murders dressed in rags. Their inept pursuit of the killer is played for a kind of comedy that removes us from the horror of the crimes. Perhaps the voiceover contributes as well, distancing us from the time period and from the characters as real people, and allowing us to treat the whole thing as an intellectual curiosity rather than as the confusing (for Grenouille) or horrifying (for the townspeople) situation it would have been in reality.

There are some ravishing visuals, as might be expected from such a sensual story. Each scent that arouses Grenouille’s nose needs to dazzle the audience’s eyes, and regular Tykwer cinematographer Frank Griebe is able to make sight a passable stand in for scent, at least in the early scenes. Near the end of the film, a technically impressive but rather dull orgy scene takes place in a village square, but by that time, the story had entered unbelievable territory and only left me snickering. In the end Perfume’s lingering aroma isn’t a pleasant one.

6/10 (6/10)

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Alliance released The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in a DVD/Blu-ray combo pack in Canada on Tuesday July 6, 2010.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Director: Niels Arden Oplev): Though I’m not usually susceptible to the marketing hype that surrounds publishing “phenomenons” like the Harry Potter, Twilight, or DaVinci Code books, I do have a bit of a soft spot for Scandinavian crime thrillers. My initial enjoyment of Stieg Larsson’s book has cooled a little after reading the second in the series, but I still found it an enjoyable read. The film version, now more than a year old, has finally been released on DVD and Blu-ray in English Canada after a belated theatrical run earlier this spring. Strangely, Alliance released the film in Quebec in 2009, and I believe all three films in the “Millennium” series have already come and gone to cinemas in La Belle Province. My theory is that Alliance was waiting to see what was happening with the planned English-language (Hollywood) remakes, and decided there was still time to make a little money before those came out. I’m not being cynical. Foreign-language films are a hard sell in English Canada, even if they are based on hugely successful books. The timing of the DVD release coincides nicely with the theatrical release of the second film in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire, which opened here in Toronto this past weekend. But that’s enough preamble, what did I think of the film?

Well, for such a plot-heavy book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo also manages to introduce an interesting cast of characters. Though journalist Mikael Blomkvist (played in the film by Michael Nyqvist) and hacker Lisbeth Salander (a chiselled Noomi Rapace) are clearly the focus, I enjoyed a number of the minor characters and felt that their relationships with Mikael and Lisbeth helped fill out the story. Unfortunately, with all the plot elements to cover, the film has dispensed with many of the other characters and even jettisoned some important storylines. For instance, in the book, Mikael is carrying on an open affair with his magazine’s publisher, Erika Berger, who at one point visits him at his cabin on the island of Hedeby. He also carries on a sexual relationship with Cecilia Vanger, a member of the extended family he’s investigating. These relationships provide some insight into Blomkvist’s personality and his self-image as a bit of a ladies’ man and add some tension to his budding relationship with Lisbeth. Both characters are in the film, but just barely.

Lisbeth is a mysterious young woman with a troubled past. In the book, she has two important supporters. Dragan Armansky, the head of Milton Security, gives Lisbeth a job and looks out for her. Holger Palmgren is her appointed guardian and trustee before a debilitating stroke leads to his replacement by the sinister Nils Bjurman. Neither of these important characters appears in the film.

These are unfortunate omissions, but I can’t say that they’re unexpected. The plot of the book is more than enough to fill out the film’s nearly 150 minute running time, but as a result, it rather simplifies the story, leading to an enjoyable film that fades from the memory much more quickly than the book. Granted, books are immersive worlds that can fill weeks of our lives at a time, so my quibbles are true of just about all book-to-film adaptations. I can say that I’m still planning to catch the second installment, hopefully while it’s still in theatres. Helpfully, Alliance has included a “sneak peek” look at The Girl Who Played With Fire on the Blu-ray portion of the combo pack, as well as interviews with star Noomi Rapace and producer Soren Staermose. Perhaps indicating the beginning of a trend, the special features are not included on the DVD disc.