PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER

Not a movie for the faint-of-heart. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006; R) is filled with disturbing thoughts and images as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille captures and kills beautiful women in an effort to produce a perfume that evokes the very beauty and sensuality they had when they were alive.

Born a pauper amid the filthy street vendors, left for dead by his own mother who birthed him as she worked in her fish-monger's stall, and sold into child labor at an early age, Jean-Baptiste had a superior sense of smell - one that could discern all the factors of even the most complicated aromas. His background, however, left him mentally disturbed to the point that he had no remorse for the murders he committed.

He apprenticed with perfumers and learned how they extracted the aromas of flowers, then used similar methods to extract the aroma of beauty and attraction. Like someone on Phenphedrine, he would go without eating or sleeping for days as he traveled the country, collecting women's scents and bottling them into a series of vials he kept hidden.

The most terrible secret comes at the end of the film, which you will have to watch to find out.

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