Netflix’s The Perfumier takes as its subject one of the five senses that is perhaps the hardest to convey through cinema: smell. A German detective unable to pick up on scent enters into an unholy alliance with the titular perfume-maker … who also happens to be a suspected serial killer suspected in some gruesome murders. But how long can an agreement rooted in the olfactory continue before it becomes dissatisfactory?
THE PERFUMIER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Police detective Sunny is so desperate to maintain her sensuous connection with the married Juro that she turns to an unlikely source to regain a competitive advantage in the battle for her lover’s soul. While in pursuit of the culprit behind the slayings of two women – who were dismembered to remove their sweat glands – she suspects she might have found the key to regaining her lost sense of smell. The perfumier Dorian is desperate to create the scent of love, even if it means deriving it from some unsavory sources, and Sunny is unable to resist the lustful effect that his alchemic compound has on Juro. The two reach a tentative partnership where Dorian attempts to help Sunny regain her sense of smell using both physical and Freudian methods to unlock something inside.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The obvious point of comparison would be 2006’s thriller Perfume: The Story of a Murderer given their shared source material. But the hunt for a killer with strange proclivities will recall Se7en or The Silence of the Lambs, while the protagonist’s struggle to solve a mystery while missing an important bodily faculty brings to mind Memento. If only The Perfumier were anywhere near as good as these movies, though…
Performance Worth Watching: The movie asks some pretty ridiculous things of its star Emilia Schüle, and whether or not those work, she’s undeniably committed to the bit. Moreso than any other element in the film, it’s her performance that can make smell (or the lack thereof) tangible to the audience. Schüle can at least make the most risible elements of The Perfumier plausible, and that counts for something.
Memorable Dialogue: “If I don’t know what love is because I’ve never experienced it,” asks Dorian late in the film, “can I still create it?” While The Perfumier mostly opts to explore the implications of its story through the lurid or the surreal, every once in a while an interesting thematic thread breaks through.
Sex and Skin: There are two steamy lovemaking scenes between Sunny and Juro with a little bit of rear nudity from each, but neither is particularly protracted or graphic.
Our Take: The Perfumier is a confusing, frustrating watch in part because it ever finds a way to convey smell to the audience. The best that director Nils Willbrandt can do is reduce the sense to barely perceptible particles suspended in a neon-lit space. Without a better way to establish the emotional stakes of the story, the connections between scent and sensuality end up becoming laughable. The entire movie collapses under the weight of the inability to reconcile these intangible sensations with the gritty nature of the brutal killings.
Our Call: SKIP IT. The Perfumier is part crime drama, part erotic thriller, part character study, and a whole mess. It’s a misguided muddle of genres that never manages to make its central sensation of smell feel real and urgent. Maybe they should try scratch-and-sniff cards next time.
Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, Little White Lies and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.
Stream The Perfumier on Netflix