New Tykwer Film: Perfume gets Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman

Posted by Twitch Administrator at 6:29am.

Posted in Film News .

Screendaily is reporting that production is about to start on a new Tom Tykwer film. Being a huge fan of Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior, and the underrated Heaven, the sooner this European co-production gets going the better. Perfume has had a bit of a troubled production history. It seems that at one point, Ridley Scott was attached to direct, then Julian Schnabel took a crack at it, and tried to get Johnny Depp.
This time around Tykwer has gone a bit hollywood in his casting, with Dustin Hoffman in the lead role. The villian in the piece is the always fantastic Alan Rickman. No Sign of Ms. Potente anywere in this production, which is a shame. Shooting is set to start July 12th in Spain, France and Germany.

Here is Penguin Publishing‘s blurb on the novel:
“Perfume takes place in eighteenth-century France and is about a man, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who had no scent of his own but had been gifted with the most extraordinary sense of smell.
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born in 1738 in Paris, in the most horrid conditions, and was abandoned by his mother. Brought up by a succession of wet nurses, he started working for a tanner who, when Grenouille was thirteen, allowed him to go out and wander around the streets of Paris for one hour every day. It was then that Grenouille started his quest for the perfect smell and, with it, began his reign of terror.
Perfume is a bizarre, hypnotic and absolutely brilliant tale of horror. The depictions of the decadence of 18th century France are so vivid, you can almost smell the reek of the age and Grenouille is a mesmerising character, whose gift from God also proves to be his greatest weapon against good. ”

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Reader Comments

Lilith 06/01/2005 @ 8:31am

oh wow that book was so amazing…
It was a very sensual story so it’s a great challenge, I cannot wait to see if Mr. Tykwer is up to it.
Goro 06/01/2005 @ 8:43am

A big fan of Tom Tykwer’s and must say that WINTERSLEEPERS is more interesting and challenging in many ways than PRINCESS AND THE WARRIOR and bears watching for any Tykwer fan.

HEAVEN was a very good film, but suffers from comparisons to Kieslowski’s work. Since HEAVEN was the first of a (to be) trilogy written by the legendary Krystof Kieslowski, most of us were anticipating him directing it. Unfortunately for all filmlovers, Kieslowski died before he could direct HEAVEN and so Tykwer took over. And although Tykwer has a wonderful visual style and a narrative sense that seems to blend well with the material, a comparison with (say) BLUE shows the difference between a very good director and a great one.

I’ll be looking forward to PERFUME, though.
Kurt 06/01/2005 @ 9:03am

I absolutely agree with you on HEAVEN. As good as a film as it was...It does suffer greatly when compared to any of the films from the Three Colours Trilogy or Decalogue...Kieslowski belongs very easily in the canon of Master Film Directors.
Tykwer is still honing his skills and finding his tone…

I admit that I’ve never seen Wintersleepers, despite having rented it once and not watching it for some reason…