大象传媒

Scratch 'n' sniff cinema: Perfume is the long-awaited adaptation of Patrick S眉skind's bestselling novel about murder (and smells) most foul in 18th century Paris. Ben Whishaw (Enduring Love) stars as Grenouille, a perfumery apprentice born with an incredible nose and an obsessive desire to bottle the scent of a woman. Gloriously grotesque in its recreation of pungent Paris, it's a Grimm fairy tale for grown ups, slightly spoilt by a plodding, bloated script, and multiplex cinemas' inevitable lack of smell-o-vision.

Whishaw plays the anti-hero of S眉skind's novel brilliantly, an idiot savant with remarkable nostrils and a desire to distil the essence of every smell. An equal opportunities sniffer, he's happy hoovering up the scents of dead rats and offal until an apprenticeship with perfumier Baldini (Dustin Hoffman) perfects his olfactory talents - and brings the movie to life. Camping it up with a powdered wig and rouge like the Tootsie of the 1700s, Hoffman steals the show, chewing his way through scenery to bite into lines like "You can no more distil a cat than you can distil the smell of you and me".

"A MIDDLEBROW EFFORT"

Hampered by a script that's 30 minutes too long, the second half of Perfume lingers like a granny fart. Beating directors like Tim Burton and Ridley Scott to the job, Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) recreates the novel's historical reality perfectly. Yet his middlebrow effort can't distil S眉skind's pungent whiff of intellectual seriousness. That leaves this potentially great movie smelling vaguely disappointing, like a cheap Chanel ripoff.