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Film Essay:
“Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” as an Illustration of
ADHESIVE PSEUDO-OBJECT-RELATIONS
Like the novel by Patrick Süskind, Tom Tykwer’s film adaptation of Perfume: the story of a murderer (1986) is a gripping horror tale of a fictional eighteenth-century French serial killer. I believe it is also a grotesque version of those cases of trauma and consequence that analysts observe in the privacy of their consulting rooms. Perhaps if, as Freud (1933) suggests, extraordinary pathology can draw our attention to normal neurotic conditions, it may also be true that extraordinary fantasy may provide insight into those more ordinary pathological states. It may also be that certain artists, having “turned away from external reality... know more about internal, psychical reality and can reveal a number of things to us that would otherwise be inaccessible to us” (Freud 1933,p. 58-59).
Tykwer’s visually sumptuous film version of Süskind’s story is a masterpiece, to be sure.
However, as one intimately acquainted with the book, I cannot help but regret the necessary abbreviation of the details of each character’s experience, the reduction in the number of events in the life of the protagonist and the condensation of the passage of years leading to the development of the murderer that the translation of Süskind’s story into a commercially viable film unfortunately demands. However, I believe that, in spite of Tykwer’s considerable abridgement, Perfume (the movie) can be seen as allegory, expressing some basic truths or generalizations about human existence and as parable, highlighting certain attitudes or principles relevant to our clinical work.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
The film takes us back to eighteenth century France, where we are introduced to JeanBaptiste Grenouille (played by Ben Whishaw, the acclaimed young British actor who