This irritated me. The source material is amazing and there have been two previous remediation attempts The first was a feature film, relatively soon after the book came out which was something of a plain and flat attempt to remediate an extraordinary book into a finally indifferent film and which failed largely by being too literal and faithful, even with Ben Wishaw in. The second remediation was a German TV series, which took a central idea of the book – the search for the essential scent of woman – but in a double context. The first was a police investigation into a grotesque murder where the human scent glands had been removed from the victim and the second element was the fact that the murdered person was a member of a tight-knit group of university friends and the impact that this murder event had on their friendship group. I may not be recalling this 100% accurately but there was certainly this layered structure of the plot.
However, this version did not have the focus of either of these. It seemed very unsure what it was, in terms of both theme and style. Was it an art film; there were sequences which certainly suggested that and which did, to a degree, manage to convey something of the mystery of the scent sense but these appeared somewhat randomly. Was it a thriller? Well, certain aspects suggested this but there was not the focused drive on the crime, which would have been appropriate. Was it a psychological study? Well, again, there was an element of this, in terms of the central policewoman character and her inability to smell anything but again, no sooner was this aspect focused on than it was then jettisoned for a while as the film took off in a different direction.
And with all characters (including the titular perfumier who in the book was the necessary and fascinating focus and protagonist) little emotional engagement was there for the audience. And again, with the varied stylistic approaches, some distinctive scenes were too short, others too lengthy.
I suppose we just have to assume that the book, as book, is, necessarily unfilmable but if it is to be used the starting point for a remediation, then that needs to be truly imaginative and creative – and this was neither