Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "[D]irector Tom Tykwer eschews impressionism in favour of narrative drive, an approach that particularly pays off in the suspenseful second half..." 01/01/2007 p.38Sight and Sound
"There are some neat visual flourishes....PERFUME remains a lavish sensory experience." 01/01/2007 p.73 Movieline's Hollywood Life
"Director Tom Tykwer has an unmistakable command of the medium, and his re-creation of the dark byways of Paris is masterly." 01/01/2007 p.97 Ultimate DVD
5 stars out of 5 -- "Dark, witty, engrossing and ambitious....A deliciously amoral and hugely satisfying fable." 05/01/2007 p.117 ReelViews 7 of 10
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is beautiful in its ugliness. Among other things, it features gorgeously composed scenes of maggots, animal entrails, and human corpses. And, in direct contrast to Marie Antoinette, it portrays 18th century France is a grimy, dirty place, regardless of whether the location is Paris or Grasse...There's a mesmerizing appeal to the director's in-your-face style, even if the images he displays are often repugnant. Unfortunately, Tykwer is working with a flawed screenplay and even the most arresting visuals cannot compensate for the movie's schizophrenic story...Tykwer's approach invigorates the material, providing a provocative collage of images that will have some viewers turning away and others wishing they had deferred their most recent meal. Deeply flawed though it may be, Perfume is a challenging motion picture, and one whose impressions are not easily shaken. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
This is a dark, dark, dark film, focused on an obsession so complete and lonely it shuts out all other human experience. You may not savor it, but you will not stop watching it, in horror and fascination. Whishaw succeeds in giving us no hint of his character save a deep savage need. And Dustin Hoffman produces a quirky old master whose life is also governed by perfume, if more positively. Hoffman reminds us here again, as in "Stranger than Fiction," what a detailed and fascinating character actor he is...Why I love this story, I do not know. Why I have read the book twice and given away a dozen copies of the audiobook, I cannot explain. There is nothing fun about the story, except the way it ventures so fearlessly down one limited, terrifying, seductive dead end, and finds there a solution both sublime and horrifying. It took imagination to tell it, courage to film it, thought to act it, and from the audience it requires a brave curiosity about the peculiarity of obsession. - Roger Ebert
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