Revisit this macabre tale from German writer Patrick Süskind before viewing Tom Twyker’s (Run Lola Run) long-awaited film adaptation. Süskind’s creation Grenouille is the ultimate lurker; he is born with no bodily scent, emitting instead a palpable wrongness that even the most resilient of caretakers cannot abide for long. The misfit is eventually apprenticed to a Parisian perfumer, where he hones his ironic counter-trait - a nose preternaturally adept at identifying and cultivating pleasing scents – to a point of obsession. We descend with the antihero through provincial France on his madman’s quest to distill the essence of life wherever he sniffs it out, at whatever cost to the living source. This is a stunning literary exploration of beauty’s pull and the power of the most evocative of senses.
- Brian