Bottled Violence

This blog seems to have taken a turn for the grotesque. It seems like an appropriate time to review Patrick Suskind’s German horror novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Set in 18^th century France in the fascinating world of perfume making, it tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man born without a scent of his own. The deranged protagonist is one of the most compelling and unique villains I have ever encountered, and that includes Judge Holden in Blood Meridian. Everybody who meets Grenouille hates him because they cannot trust someone who has no scent; and in turn, he loathes the scent of society. As a young child, he becomes intoxicated with the scent of a young girl. He resolves to bottle her scent and turn it into the most beautiful perfume ever made. However, as soon as he kills her in an attempt to capture her essence, the elusive scent goes away. For the rest of his life, he embarks on a serial killing spree of 25 beautiful virgins, and he bottles their scent in order to enact his final revenge against those who have wronged him. Powered by hatred and disgust for humankind, and his own genius for creating perfume, Grenouille . The novel is in grotesque territory the whole way through, but it almost becomes unreadable in the last quarter. The ending involves a savage, disgusting twist that involves Grenouille’s own suicide and consumption by a horde of frenzied criminals.

The 2006 movie has been described on pajiba.com as “perverse whimsy” and a wasted opportunity to connect with the audience, so I’d advise against watching it unless you want to experience a “kinky fairy tale set in a violent, brutish world”. Perfume offers an interesting, highly surreal approach to the motives of serial killers, but its potential is wasted by the successive twists towards the end of the book. It’s just too much. There is just the right amount of perverse violence that achieves a spine chilling effect on the audience, and Suskind unfortunately goes overboard with his scentless demon.