The Perfumier

What did I just watch??? The movie started good with interesting storyline and it kept me wondering how the end would be. However, after 40-50 minutes watching, I 'smelled' something fishy or suspicious about this movie, yet I have been successfully seduced and could not rejected this movie scent. If I can be honest to you, I still don't know what was happened to me and why I have spent my precious time to watch this movie. This movie had left me confused, lost and stranded in a strange land without any food, gas or communication tools to seek for help. Please, please do watch this movie and help me to find out the whole points of this life.

This movie features some of the most talented actors in Germany, in my humble opinion, such as the fantastic August Diehl and the wonderful Ludwig Simon, or the talented Emilia Schüle. I'm still trying to figure out what lured them into this project...

"The Perfume" by Patrick Süskind is such a great novel and is mentioned to be the source of inspiration for this movie. Unfortunately there is neither any kind of intriguing storyline, nor do we get to know the characters or their ambitions in depth, which inevitably leaves the viewer with this fragmentary piece that is hard to engage in. Some of the more odd characters, such as the female accomplice Rex, would need so much more explaination in this narrative. The viewer just can figure out what drives them to their action (despite total madness?).

It's such a pity, that the script is so bad, because the actors are as great as always. I'm suffering while watching them saying some of the most pathetic nonsense-lines from the script. They are struggling hard to make the lines work, but the dialogues and monologues are just too strange. I'm very sorry on their behalf.

Where to start, where to end? What a terrible German movie drivel, once again. Too many just can't write good scripts, it seems, and just don't understand story, character development, suspense, protagonists. Woven in is once again that bland wokeness that Netflix has come to represent. The original, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, is a pretty much perfect movie, great visuals, acting, story, tragedy. This here is just a grand muddle, from beginning to end. The acting is okayish, as are the technical-artistic aspects like camerawork, music etc. Altogether, when will there be good script writing film schools in Germany?

Oh where to go with this movie. I thought it started out pretty ok in a sense and I was interested to see how the plot was going to develop. That was until it stopped. In the simplest of terms this film is a mess. The cast are alright but the plot just goes no where. Its about this police detective that has to regain their sense of smell with the help from a perfumier who is said to use deadly methods to get the perfect blend and thus gets his girlfriend back. It was listed as a crime thriller, but really there is none of that happening here. Its just nothing really but I do appreciate the cast and they do try hard to make somehing, which unfortunatly is just a let down in the end.

No pun intended - I have seen the movie Perfume which is really good ... so if you compare this to the superior movie (and/or the amazing book/novel which I have not read I have to admit) ... well the movie will not be looking too good ... so I get the rating in one sense - well more than one sense.

The acting is quite decent overall, the story is ok I reckon. But it does take its time, it is predictable and in the end most will not be sufficiently satisfied. August Diehl might have been able to save this, but he isn't in this long enough to make a dent in the right direction. Still I liked that it at least tried and all the actors did their best ... I've seen way worse movies than this.