22/09/2006

After a four-year absence from the big screen, German director Tom Tykwer is back with a project that was anything but easy: the cinematic adaptation of one of the biggest best-sellers of recent times, and one of the most fascinating and original stories ever written, Patrick Süskind’s Perfume.

Tykwer seems to have lived up to the challenge, judging by last week’s opening weekend box office results in Germany: €20m from 1m admissions.

With its €50m budget, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is one of the most expensive films in the history of German cinema, and thus the efforts of renowned producer Bernd Eichinger (of Constantin Film) – the man behind The Name of the Rose and, recently, The Elementary Particles [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Franka Potente & Moritz Ble…
interview: Oskar Roehler
film profile] - are to be awarded.

However, confirmation will come only after the film’s distribution in other European countries (several set dates include: France, October 4; Belgium, October 18; Spain, November 24; the Czech Republic, December 1; Holland, December 7; the UK, December 8; Sweden, January 12, 2007; and Finland, February 9) and especially in the US next December 27.

In the meantime, the new film by the director of the acclaimed Run Lola Run (which marked the rebirth of German cinema in 1998) is being released today on over 350 Italian screens by Medusa Film.

Tykwer, onhand in Rome for press screening, stated that "the main challenge was to infuse the film with the same intensity as the writing, to make sure that a narrative language as unique as Süskind’s in describing 18th century France and the world of scents could be transformed into a cinematic language".

The film tells the tragic tale of perfumer Grenouille, bestowed with an extremely developed sense of smell and obsessed will distilling and preserving women’s scent. The obsession turns into a nightmare that will lead him to murder. The cast includes Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman.

The scope of the European colossal – which was co-produced by Spain and France (see film profile [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) – did not frighten the 40 year-old director. "My friendship with Bernd Eichinger was a creative one and I did not have to make any compromises in making the film," said Tykwer. "I had the last word on the final cut and I made the film just as I wanted. When you work on a film this big the most important thing is to have as shared a vision as possible with the producers. That is how it was with Bernd, who shared my vision of the story right away and allowed me to make exactly the film I had in mind".

(Translated from Italian)