Perfume

P convinced me to watch this show with him, and both of us were looking forward to a modern thriller of a psychopatic serial killer hunting down young, hot-bodied girls! But the movie turned out quite to be something else.

In fact, when it started, we both wondered if we were in the right cinema, for instead of a modern setting, we were greeted by a fish market in 18th century France. We were told a story about a young boy with a talent to suss out the millions of different scents and smells in the world. In his teens, he uncovered an obsession for the aroma of young womanhood, which eventually transformed him into a murderer in his attempt to extract the "essence" from these young women.

Despite a marked difference from what we imagined the movie to be, it was still quite enjoyable save for the last 45 minutes, where we witnessed with our disbelieving eyes how a murderer who was about to be nailed into a wooden crucifix and hacked to death became an angel in the eyes of the hating public, after he dabbed himself with the very perfume he concoted from the essence of the women he murdered. Intoxicated with the powerful scent, which purportedly held magical powers of love, the crowd started disrobing themselves and making out with each other. To me, it looked horribly like a mass orgy which was quite incongruous with the style and taste of the show in its earlier parts. Even the distraught father whose daughter was killed begged the murderer for forgiveness (What the #$%#^$#^@?).

So if you wanna catch something different and interesting, but don't mind the last quarter of the show being crap, you might wanna consider this movie. It's along the same line as Chocolat, but without the irresistable and sexy Johnny Depp, of course. Or, if you've always wanted to witness a mass orgy, don't give this show a miss!

Rated: 3/5