Jean-Baptiste Grenouille came into the world unwanted, expected to die, yet born with an unnerving sense of smell that created alienation as well as talent. Of all the smells around him, Grenouille is beckoned to the scent of a woman's soul, and spends the rest of his life attempting to smell her essence again by becoming a perfumer, and creating the essence of an innocence lost.

Plot Synopsis:
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The film begins with the sentencing of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), a notorious murderer. Between the reading of the sentence and the execution, the story of his life is told in flashback, beginning with his abandonment at birth in a French fish market. Raised in an orphanage, Grenouille grows into a strangely detached boy with a superhuman sense of smell. After growing to maturity as a tanner's apprentice, he makes his first delivery to Paris, where he revels in the new odors. He focuses on the scent of a kindly girl selling plums (Karoline Herfurth) and startles her with his behavior. To prevent her from crying out, he covers the girl's mouth and unintentionally suffocates her. After realizing that she is dead, he strips her body naked and smells her until the scent fades.

Afterwards, Grenouille becomes haunted by the desire to preserve the woman's scent forever.After making a delivery to a perfume shop, Grenouille amazes the Italian owner, Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman), with his ability to create fragrances. He revitalizes the perfumer's career with new formulas, demanding only that Baldini teach him how to convert scents into perfume. Baldini explains that all perfumes are harmonies of twelve individual scents, and may contain a theoretical thirteenth scent. He also tells a story about a perfume discovered in an Egyptian tomb that was so perfect that it caused everyone in the entire world to briefly believe they were in paradise the moment the bottle was opened.

When Grenouille discovers that Baldini's method of distillation will not capture the scents of all objects, such as iron chains and dead animals, he becomes depressed. After receiving a letter of presentation written by Baldini, Grenouille leaves to learn a different method in Grasse. En route to Grasse, Grenouille realises that he has no scent of his own, and is therefore a cipher. He decides that creating the perfect smell will prove his worth.

Upon arrival in Grasse, Grenouille catches the scent of the naive Laura Richis (Rachel Hurd-Wood), daughter of the wealthy Antoine Richis (Alan Rickman) and decides that she will be his "thirteenth scent", the linchpin of his perfect perfume. Grenouille finds a job in Grasse under Madame Arnulfi (Corinna Harfouch) and Dominique Druot (Paul Berrondo) assisting with perfumes and learns the method of enfleurage. He kills a lavender picker and attempts to extract her scent using the method of hot enfleurage, which fails. After this, he tries the method of cold enfleurage on a prostitute and successfully preserves the scent of the woman.

Grenouille embarks on a killing spree, murdering beautiful young girls and capturing their scents. He dumps the women's naked corpses around the city, creating panic. After preserving the first twelve scents, Grenouille plans his attack on Laura. During a church sermon against him it is announced that a man has confessed to the murders. Richis remains unconvinced and flees the city with his daughter. Grenouille tracks her scent to a roadside inn and sneaks into her room that night. The next morning, Richis discovers Laura lying dead in her bed.

Soldiers capture Grenouille moments after he finishes preparing his perfume. On the day of his execution, he applies a drop of the perfume over himself. The executioner and the crowd in attendance are speechless; the perfume endows Grenouille the essence of innocence and beauty, and they declare Grenouille "innocent" before falling into a massive orgy. Richis, still convinced at Grenouille's guilt, threatens him with his sword, before being overwhelmed by the scent and embracing Grenouille as his "son". Eventually, the town awakens and decides that the godly Grenouille could not have been the murderer. Druot is convicted for the murders and hanged, since it was his backyard where the clothes and hair of the victims were found.

Walking out of Grasse unscathed, Grenouille has enough perfume to rule the world, but has discovered that it will not allow him to love or be loved like a normal person. Disenchanted by his aimless quest and tired of his life, he returns to Paris. Back in the city, Grenouille returns to the fish market where he was born and dumps the perfume on his head. Overcome by the scent and in the belief that Grenouille is an angel, the nearby crowd devours him. The next day, all that is left are his clothes and the open perfume bottle, from which one final drop of perfume falls.

The Fish Market scenes were shot in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter. Two and a half tons of fish and one ton of meat was used over the course of the shoot, and people as far away as six miles reported a bad smell in the air.
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As of 2006, it is the most expensive German movie ever made.
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Costume Designer Pierre-Yves Gayraud spent fifteen weeks researching costumes prior to anything being finalized. In total, over fourteen hundred costumes were made. After they had been shipped from Bucharest, Romania, the costumes then had to be aged and dirtied, and once they were ready to be worn, Writer and Director Tom Tykwer insisted that the actors and actresses wear them continuously for several days at a time, even to the point of sleeping in them, as this was a common practice in the period, in which the film is set.
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Because Tom Tykwer considered the orgy scene to be a dance which needed choreographing, he turned to a dance troupe to help him put the scene together; La Fura Dels Baus. Their chief choreographer, Jurgen Muller, and his assistant Lluis Fuster were primarily responsible for the scene. Fifty key players were selected from La Fura Dels Baus, who would all be clearly seen on camera. Another one hundred experienced performers were also selected, who would appear in the background, and at the periphery of shots. These one hundred fifty dancers, combined with the six hundred extras, made up the entire assembly of seven hundred fifty people.
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The book was the source of inspiration for the Nirvana song "Scentless Apprentice". Kurt Cobain claimed to carry the book in his pocket, and said he identified with Grenouille's alienation.
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When filming the scenes set in Paris, Tom Tykwer was so meticulous about making sure the dirt looked right, that he was given the nickname "Lord of the Dirt" by the crew.
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The production team scouted eight different countries in Europe looking for the best place to represent eighteenth century Paris, before settling on Barcelona, Spain.
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The actual liquid of the "ultimate" perfume at the end is a mixture of cola thinned with a bit of water.
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During pre-production, Tom Tykwer, Director of Photography Frank Griebe, Production Designer Uli Hanisch, and Costume Designer Pierre-Yves Gayraud studied the complete works of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Joseph Wright, in order to ensure the film's aesthetic correctly captured eighteenth century France.
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According to the official website, the film featured sixty-seven speaking roles, five thousand two hundred extras, and one hundred two sets. Behind the scenes, five hundred twenty technicians were employed.
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The orgy scene was filmed in Barcelona, Spain, in the Poble Espanyol, and took over a week to complete. According to the official website, there were a total of seven hundred fifty extras in the scene, with forty Make-up Artists, and thirty-five Wardrobe Assistants constantly on hand at any given time.
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Producer and Screenwriter Bernd Eichinger, had been trying to get Author Patrick Süskind, with whom he was friends, to sell the rights to the novel from the time of its original publication in 1985, and Eichinger very much considered the film to be a dream project. In 2001, he finally managed to convince Suskind to sign over the rights, for ten million euro.
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Ridley Scott was attached to the project years before production finally began. Tim Burton was also considered as director.
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Patrick Süskind is known to be very skeptical, and for a long time did not want to sell the movie rights to his novel. His experience with Bernd Eichinger, and others who desperately wanted to turn "Das Parfum" into a movie, was shown in the satire Rossini (1997), for which he wrote the screenplay. His character was the strange Author, Jakob Windisch. Bernd Eichinger was portrayed in the character Oskar Reiter. In Rossini, the book everybody was fighting over, was changed into a novel about the Loreley-legend. Other characters in this movie are caricatures of the Munich media business.
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Other directors interested in making this film were Martin Scorsese, Milos Forman, and Stanley Kubrick. In 1990, Roman Polanski gave an interview, in which he said Producer Claude Berri wanted him to direct.
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Most of the costumes were manufactured in Bucharest, Romania.
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Julian Schnabel, after making Before Night Falls (2000), was another director who tried to mount a production of this story, but the project never got off the ground.
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Alan Rickman and Sir John Hurt appeared in the Harry Potter film franchise.
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Hèloïse Adam auditioned for the part of Madame Arnulfi.
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Every time Jean-Baptiste (Ben Whishaw) leaves one of his Masters, from his mother on, they get killed or executed.
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The lavender fields are clearly Lavendula intermedia, natural hybrid of Lavendula angustifolia (the true lavender used in perfumery) and Lavendula latifolia. Lavendula intermedia was discovered only at the end of 19th century and cultivated from the 1930's. Its flower is bigger (and the visual aspect more suitable for a movie) than Lavendula angustifolia but its natural essence is less fine.
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At one of the very first scenes of Jean-Baptiste execution, right before crowd starts fighting for the best place to see it, an antenna can be seen next to the balcony where the authorities and Laura's father are standing. It is easily identifiable as the peak of Calatrava Telecommunications Tower at Montuich mountain at Barcelona, which is quite near the building where the scene was shot.
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While Grenouille is hanging heads down above the water filled barrel his hair changes from dripping wet to dry to dripping wet.
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Midway through the movie a whore appears with a Pekingese dog. The Pekingese were not formally introduced into Europe until midway through the 19th Century when Britain and France "sacked" the Chinese Empire (circa 1860). The Pekingese were kept exclusively in the Chinese Imperial Palace (Forbidden City) until then and maintained by eunuchs. The movie takes place in the mid 18th Century. While it may be possible British or French royalty could have had a Pekingese (although extremely unlikely), a French harlot owning a Pekingese in the 1700's is an impossibility.
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The method of enfleurage that Grenouille is first seen practicing is called cold enfleurage - placing live botanicals in a layer of lard or tallow set in a frame. However, this method of enfleurage was not developed until the 1800's. The movie is set in the mid 1700's.
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Fifteen minutes into the movie, Jean-Baptiste enters town and sees a carriage with two women inside, one holding a Pomeranian. According to the American Pomeranian Club, "When (Pomeranians) first came to notice in Britain in the middle of the 19th century, some specimens were said to weigh as much as thirty pounds and to resemble the German wolf Spitz in size, coat and color." The film takes place in the mid-seventeen hundreds (the 18th century). The Pomeranian, as we know it today, would not have existed as depicted in the film.
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When Grenouille meets the perfumer, at his house/laboratory, he knows where all the substances are, although he has never been there before. He is able to do this due to his heightened sense of smell, he is able to work out where specific substances are by the scent they give off.
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In the scene in which the body of the prostitute that Grenouille kills is taken away you can see some of her hair, but earlier in the movie Grenouille removed all of her hair.What we see is not her hair, but tears from her clothes. The cloth is so frayed that it seems to be hair.
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