“The Perfume of Life” in the Cinema: Do You Smell Anything? – culture

For him the smell of fresh grass is a pleasure, for them a massacre. She explained that if the stems were cut, the insects would attack the cutting and suck the grass. As a defense, the plants release substances that in turn attract other insects, which are then supposed to kill the suckling animals. Just slaughter. What he likes to smell, what reminds him of his childhood and father with a lawn mower, are just enzymes, she said.

So this movie is about proteins and biochemical processes, as well as outlining judicial problems and protests. This is how it goes: Guillaume (Gregory Montell), who is in his forties, has not a wife, but a daughter – according to the family court, the apartment is too small to allow her to stay with him. So he takes whatever job he can get. So the driver became the perfume consultant Anne (Emmanuelle Devos), who composed perfumes for Dior, but after the breakdown, it is allowed to create only the smells of cat litter or deodorant rollers.

As a spectator, you almost think you can smell some scents

But she loves to share her knowledge of scents with the man who will soon become her girl for everything: “Close your eyes and breathe slowly, as if you were smelling a flower,” she tells Clouds in her aroma lab. And join him, he taps on the scent of orange peel or the scent of trash cans. As a viewer, you also think that you can smell the individual components – even if the cinema is an odor-free zone, at least on the screen.

With regard to the history of film, olfactory sensations play a secondary role, while sensory impressions in cinema are always aimed at visual and auditory stimuli. Experiments with scent organs or scent cards to be scanned cannot prevail. The somewhat unworldly Mademoiselle Anne can give her audience a sense of olfactory perception – perhaps the greatest achievement of this French feature film from 2019.

Fortunately, screenwriter and director Gregory Magni (“L’air de rien”) doesn’t make the mistake of creating an affair with the on-screen couple; He takes time for his characters and their characteristics and tells them about a friendship that hardly exists in real life – the two are very unequal. Despite everything, it looks vibrant and human and not at all flowery as the German title suggests.

perfumeF 2019 – Directed and written by: Gregory Magni. Camera: Thomas Rams. Dead: Emmanuel DeVos, Gregory Montell, Serge Lopez. Happy entertainment, 100 minutes