Word: skind
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From this unappealing premise Author Patrick Süskind, 37, spins a tale as energetic and engaging as it is improbable. Immediately after giving birth, an unwed mother dumps her unwanted infant into a pile of fish offal, amid the "fiendish stench" of the nearby Cimetičre des Innocents in Paris. Unfortunately, the baby's screams attract the attention of the police. They arrest the mother and hand her progeny over to church authorities, who baptize him Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. The tyke's wet nurses keep quitting. He drinks too greedily, they complain, and there is something else truly spooky about...
What is a novelist to do with an antihero who has no need of external reality except for an occasional sniff? Süskind invents several short-lived missions for Jean-Baptiste. The first, to become the "greatest perfumer of all time," is child's play. Wheedling an apprenticeship with the renowned but fading establishment of Giuseppe Baldini, Grenouille easily makes his master the toast of Paris and the rest of the civilized world. Next, he spends seven years on an isolated mountain, safe from the smells of humanity and lolling in olfactory memories. Finally, he embarks on a quest...
Despite the plot's implausibilities, Süskind's fable proves effective in several ways. Born half a century before the French Revolution, Grenouille is a foretaste of modern man as monstrous solipsist or, as a contemporary describes him, an "entirely new specimen of the race." The novel's emphasis on the sense of smell is disquieting, given the deodorizing proclivities of modern life: "The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it." And those readers who feel...
...insatiable industry. German director Robert Schwentke is making Flightplan, a transatlantic hijack thriller starring Jodie Foster. And Eichinger has teamed with fellow German Tom Tykwer, director of the international hit, Run Lola Run, to make Perfume, based on the award-winning novel by German author Patrick Süskind, about an 18th century serial killer who tries to mask the stench of decadent French society with fragrances distilled from his victims' bodies (Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman are tipped to star). As Hollywood reinvigorates its product with injections of European culture, Tykwer's compatriots are relaxing and becoming more catholic...
Fineberg said this fact is irrelevant. "It'skind of like saying he's the only one with blackhair and they all have brown hair," he said...