July 13, 2005

Summer reading. Perfume.

Perfume Tom Tykwer has begun shooting his adaptation of Patrick Süskind's Perfume in Munich with Ben Whishaw as one of the most extraordinary characters in contemporary fiction, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and Dustin Hoffman as the Italian perfumer, Baldini.

If you've never read the novel, you have time - the film isn't due in theaters until late 2006 - but do get it done. To whet your appetite, Vintage offers the opening passages...

In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. His story will be told here. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name - in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations, de Sade's, for instance, or Saint-Just's, Fouché's, Bonaparte's, etc - has been forgotten today, it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immorality, or, more succinctly, to wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent.



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Posted by dwhudson at July 13, 2005 11:37 AM

Comments

No, David, I've "never the novel." Have you "always the story" or "sometimes the movie"? :)

Posted by: ed at July 13, 2005 1:37 PM

Will Tykver become the go-to guy for projects nurtured by deceased auteurs? Kieslowski/Heaven, now Kubrick/Perfume...

Nevertheless, I'm glad this is officially shooting; I've been following it ever since I read the book (which I second the recommendation of) and was convinced it was the sort of project that was just too potentially-wonderful to ever come to fruition. It'll be interesting to see how Tykver handles the more nasally oriented moments (the seven years in the mountain, the climax, etc.)

Posted by: dvd at July 13, 2005 3:47 PM

It will be very challenging to capture what I felt was the novel's most extraordinary quality -the amazing descriptions of a world perceived dominantly by smell.

Posted by: Krista at July 14, 2005 4:25 AM

well darn it..i've been meaning to read this book for years now. you've now forced me to buy it. and i thank you.

Posted by: brad at July 14, 2005 4:06 PM

David, I didn't know that Kubrick was once... what, "attached"... to Perfume. Interesting, interesting. Meantime, I, too, look forward to seeing how TT handles this; he's been living and breathing the story for a few years now and I'm sure it'll be at least visually wow-inducing.

Posted by: David Hudson at July 15, 2005 11:33 AM

According to Michel Ciment's book, Kubrick bought the rights in the 80s and wrote (or had written) an adaptation after completing Full Metal Jacket.

One of those myriad projects that sadly never came to fruition...

Posted by: dvd at July 17, 2005 5:10 AM