ADAPTATION 'IHRILLEH
PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER
(15) 147min 0000
years to the birth of Grenouille in a stinking market.
Life changes for Grenouille when he catches the scent
The most daunting task facing director Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola, Run, Heaven) when adapting Patrick Suskind’s novel Perfume was how to stimulate the olfactory senses onscreen in the scintillating way the author managed on the page. Tykwer attempts to give a cinema audience a nasal orgasm through the use of a voiceover that, by and large, quotes directly from the book; the trouble with doing so is that it serves to remind us how wonderful the source material is. But, the German filmmaker is not to be outdone and, as is his want (check out his early magical realist effort Deadly Maria), he brings his own visual bag of tricks, full of cinematic references, to the party.
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (upcoming Brit Ben Whishaw) is being led to the gallows in 1776. The crowds are baying for his blood; the streets of Paris are even more putrid than the London equivalent depicted by Roman Polanski in Oliver Twist. The picture then flashes back 22
of a young woman selling plums (Karoleine Herfurth) and, almost accidentally, strangles her. The powerful sequence ends with our anti-hero sniffing the body. He spends the rest of his days trying to capture this smell and goes to work for a one-time acclaimed perfumer Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman) where he starts making perfume in the way Tyler Durden makes soap. Wishaw is excellent in the central role, which demands a murderous ambivalence akin to that of Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. What works well on the page, however, does not always necessarily work onscreen, and in faithfully following Suskind’s text, Andrew Birkin and Bernd Eichinger’s screenplay starts to plod when Grenouille serial killer antics are in full swing. Fortunately Tykwer pulls things back for the final scene, the film’s point of departure, which is a fantastical homage to both Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point. (Kaleem Aftab) I General release from lue 26 Dec. See profile rn lrstrngs.
secret servrces responsible for his “disappearance. or was it the work of the feared Moroccan General Mohamed ()ufkir. acting with the complicity of the CIA?
Freely mixing fact and speculation. Le Peron offers a version of these events from the perspective of a bit player in the drama. one Georges Figon (Charles Berling). who serves as the film's Sunset Boulevard style narrator. An ex con from a bourgeois
background. who's keen to make it in the film business, I igon is approached by underworld contacts to produce a documentary about decolonisation. But he and his collaborators the director Georges tranJu (Jean Pierre Leaud) and the writer Marguerite Duras (Josiane Balasko) are unaware that the undertaking is actually a trap to lure the charismatic Barka to the french capital.
With its clandestine dealings and lethal l_)etrayals. / Saw Ben Barka Get Kr/led (the title derives from an interwew a fugitive Figon gave to l 'Expr‘ess) unfolds as a conspiracy thriller. echoing Jacques Hivette's paranoia infused Par/s Belongs to Us. Claustropltobicztlly shot in wrntry tones. and accompanied by an evocative )a// score. it features an impressive performance from a seedy looking Berling. whose volatile fabulist is hopelessly out of his depth in such treacherous waters.
(lom Dawson) I Gl’l, Glasgow from In 22- Hill 28 Dec only
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Ihe first hour of Icelander Dagur Karl's follow up to Nor Albrnor is just as good as his ((tlll'ky debut. Daniel (Jakob C(xlergrenl is a graffiti artist who makes money by taking commissions to wnte girls names on walls for men who are trying to impress them.
Unfortunately for him. the taxman iMikael Bertelseni is sniffing around the spray paints. l’ooling around Copenhagen With his best pal Roger. aka Grandpa (Nicolas Bro). they bump into a myriad of eccentric characters. But Daniel is running out of luck. and
.1 I ’1 (L3;
Film
eview of the Year
I This is all relative. I'm well aware. as a film critic and man who has lost all his friends since recommending the complete works of Bela Tarr to them, that what might be right for me. may not be right for some. The films released in 2006 that reminded me (against a frequent, sometimes overwhelming hurricane of doubt) why I still love the greatest art form of the 20th century were Malick's The New World (pictured). Haneke's remarkable thriller polemic Hidden. Clooney’s liberal. beautifully nuanced Good Night, and Good Luck, raw Aussie outlaw flick The Proposition. Jun Ichikawa‘s abject lesson in adaptation Tony Takitani, and Cristi Puiu‘s absolutely brilliant The Death of Mr Lazarescu (about as close to a masterpiece as we are going to get in this list).
Other released films that impressed me included Tommy Lee Jones' directorial cinema debut The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Noah Baumbach‘s exquisitely crafted The Squid and the Whale and Lodge Kerrigan's painful Keane. Also filmmakers Ira The Delta Sachs and Rowan The Boys Woods both finally delivered on their early promise with 40 Shades of Blue and Little Fish respectively this year. As autumn and winter set in I enjoyed hiding from the shitty weather watching small gems Red Road. Children of Men. Pan’s Labyrinth and Little Miss Sunshine. Best documentary features were Fatih Head On Akin’s Crossing The Bridge, his hymn to the music scene in Istanbul and of course Herzog‘s Grizzly Man. Best re-issues were The Passenger. Melville‘s stunning Army in the Shadows. The Asphalt Jungle and Kiss me Deadly. I need to go and get my eyes tested now. (Paul Dale)
scoring with a chick that Grandpa fancies proves his downfall.
lhe black and white images (With one pivotal moment in colour) and the use of graffiti is reminiscent of Coppola's ritaiestic Rurrrble Frsh. However. that's where the similarities end as there isn't much in the way of a story in Dark Horse. Indeed. after the lightweight plot has run its course it runs smack bang into a blank wall. one smeared wrth anti graffiti paint. (Kaleem Aftab) I (3/ l. (7/.‘isgow from In 25) [)ec— Thu «1 Jan /(,H<(:/udrng Mon 7 K Tue 2 Jan).
1.1 [)ec I’t)()(5 :1 Jan L’()()r' THE LIST 63