Red Hair Dye: The Story Of A Murderer
The central plot-device of Patrick Suskind’s novel, and therefore Tom Twyker’s film Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer is the development of a perfume which is so intoxicating it will enslave mankind. There are a number of problems with this, namely that said perfume appears to be made out of the distilled essence of thirteen virginal girls, at least half of which appear to come from the lower classes: which one would imagine in eighteenth century France would stink up a storm. Not so much enslaving mankind as whiffing a bit of fish-guts and minestrone. Nevertheless if we accept the premise of the film there is still another more pressing problem in the visual representation of this film.
Look at these young women. To the left we have Karoline Herfurth, the source of our murderous perfumers initial obsession. A fruit-seller in Paris, she seems to have a remarkable hair colour for someone of her era. Indeed lets be fair, if Clairol’s Seria is not involved then there is some serious loss in hair dye technology between the 1760’s and now. Of course this hair colour could be natural. It could be, but clearly isn’t, as no-one has natural hair THAT red*. Except Rachel Hurd-Wood (right) , who appears to have exactly the same, somewhat unnatural hair tone. Its almost as if they bought too much Feria Blood Red and had to use it up. They also dip another murder victim (the prostitute, what did you expect) in the brew too. All of which slightly undermines the lack of technology apparently in the perfume making process. though not quite as much as having Dustin Hoffman hamming it up in the perfume trade.
Casting is one of the films oddities. What the casting directors saw in Pingu from Nathan Barley as the lead character it is unclear? He is somewhat odd looking, having the air and gravitas of a slightly more contained Lee Evans. Still it is a role which requires little in the way of speech, that being handled by John hurt doing the narration. And as Lars Von-Trier, and anyone who has seen Watership Down will testify, a John Hurt narration can save any movie. And any film with a mass orgy which include bishops and fishwives can never be a wholly bad thing. The crowd below are just about to rip their clothes off and get at it. Tastefully of course. Driven wild by the smell of teenage girls body odour. Hmm.
*Indeed my friend from the politically ginger camp are quite adamant that Hollywood always gets red hair wrong, and happily trump up Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson and a blonde who has been dumped in the dye.
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Emma on January 15th, 2007
My dad’s irrational prejudice against gingers is based in part on the fact that apparently ‘they smell a bit funny’. I would like to make it clear that I do not share this prejudice.
Misty on February 27th, 2007
Maybe the colour is not natural, but I completely love it!! I’m a brunette who dyes her hair in red and that’s the colour I want in my hair!! Rachel-Hurd Wood is blonde and I think Karoline Herfurth is blonde too. So their hair caught the colour really well!! I wonder which dye they used… I would do anything to know it!! T_T
Cassady on March 11th, 2007
I can’t help but wonder why someone so obviously after realism went to an art film. This reviewer should have stayed home and watched Law & Order. What a boring movie it would have been if they had made it about the technicalities of the perfuming industry. Are we going to get upset that the incidental score probably wouldn’t have actually been playing as well? It’s a movie. It’s fiction. Learn to suspend your disbelief.
And I think the point about the girls smell just demonstrates that you kinda missed the point. The idea is that their smell is intoxicating. Maybe you personally don’t find anything intoxicating about young girls but I’m afraid most people do. And teenage girls on the edge of puberty don’t stink of b/o. The idea is that humans are like flowers, they bud, they bloom and they rot and it is at the blooming point that they generally look and smell the nicest. The whole point of the character is that he is the only one who realises this and he is the only one with the power to discover the perfect human scent. And humans, being humans, are inexplicably drawn to it, almost like magic.
Cassady on March 12th, 2007
As for the hair colour thing, the whole movie was shot and graded in brighter-than-life colour (perhaps to make up for the fact that we haven’t yet invented Smell-A-Vision?), so I don’t think it really matters that the hair colour of the girls wasn’t 100% realistic. In fact - considering the film has a narration throughout - perhaps we might consider that we were seeing the girls through Grenouille’s eyes.
And I’m not sure why the reviewer had a problem with Ben Whishaw, I thought he was perfectly cast. Grenouille is supposed to be odd-looking and socially inept and he played it perfectly.
Pete on March 12th, 2007
Clearly you haven’t ever had a teenaged sister if you think teenage girls are naturally fragrant creatures. They spend a lot of money to make themselves smell nice!
Maybe you personally don’t find anything intoxicating about young girls but I’m afraid most people do. Errrr….
If you read the article again closely, you’ll find nowhere where I said I didn’t like the film. I was just interested in the juxtaposition between the attempts as gritty realism (Paris as dirty and filthy) and these hyper-stylised bits.
V on March 13th, 2007
Hair dye has been around a long while though, and a lot of the ways it has been improved since the Romans used it have to do with making it long lasting rather than changing the colour. The fruit seller probably wouldn’t have been able to afford loads of cosmetic stuff like hair dye anyway, but the prostitute might have seen it as an investment if it made her look better.
Erin (redhead speakin up in here) on April 25th, 2008
I dont know about you guys but i loved this movie, i fell in love with when i saw it. Everything about it was soo deep and alluring. i doubt the colour of their hair matters, one of my old friends had almost the same colour and it was natural. i love that colour of red, its so amazing. My hair is a strawberry blondish kind of hue, with everyother colour mixed in like brown, blonde, extremely light blonde, orange, brownish purple. its just all over the place… and natural.. yes…
shelle on June 30th, 2008