I no longer have to pretend I have read Perfume, for now I can simply say ‘no I haven’t, but I have seen the film’. I think I enjoyed it more than I thought. After discussing it with a friend who has read the book this morning I realised there had been a number of really clever and interesting things done thematically which I hadn’t really thought about last night.
One thing I would say is that it would really have enhanced the whole experience if there had been a way to catch a whiff of some of the things the Grenouille was smelling during the film. You really did get a very realistic sense of the heightened sense of smell he possessed, but that just made me more keen to actually smell what he was smelling. It was like a morbid curiosity.
On the whole I’d recommend it.
