Okay, I've decided to put in on paper- or blog- just because I'm sure that I can flesh out -no pun intended- my own silly argument: Perfume is in fact, a vampire movie, the perfect one I set out to find among promising titles like "30 Days of Night" and " I am Legend"
Anyway, here I was hanging at the video store in a not so socially compromised Saturday night and stumbled upon this one...
I've heard of it before, you know, based on the German bestseller and directed by the guy who did the LOLA movie that generated critical praise and general, fanatical madness among hard core fans.
The poster was enough for me to grab it, it looked delicate and beautiful... a woman opening up like a crystal vial, dissolving away in rose petals, it was a visual presentation of an olfactory sensation, the fleeting scent of a red haired girl walking down the street...
What I found out was basically the Vampire Lestat loose in Perfumania. I am not making fun of this movie at all, it is just that it had this AnneRice imprint to it, specially the elaborate, painstaking detail of the visual... it was like reading 3 pages of someone running "spidery fingers" over piano keys. Those who read Anne Rice know what I'm talking about. However, this movie deals not with sight, but smell and I must declare the genius of the director, because this is one of the hardest things to translate on screen. They basically relied on the overlapping of visuals and music... there is a brief, clever scene in which the combination is so rich that I found myself breathing deeply.
It all unfolds fairytale style with a likeable little boy in his way to become an antihero of sorts- the guy you want to forgive but your morals wont allow you to. Jean Baptiste is in fact an Anne Rice vampire.
In his twisted universe he is providing an homage to WOMAN, and all it conveys.
Since judgement of aesthetics rely heavily on our ability to discriminate by means of the senses, Baptiste who has a non par sense of smell, sets himself free of all strains, exalts himself above mere mortals, trying to pin down all elements of the feminine psyche: the essence of mother, child, lover, etc, with only one drive, the need to preserve it all for eternity. He finds the female world wonderful and very much a la Lestat, kills indiscriminately, from virgin to whore, just to try to grasp what he cannot understand.
It is the best vampire movie with a non vampire character, ever.
There are lots of quotes in this movie but I'll just put a random that Is been stuck in my head since I saw the movie
"Perfume, pecado original amor que te consume, aroma al natural " Ana Gabriel-Pecado Original
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