Patrick Suskind's 1985 novel ''Perfume'' has always been considered impossible to film. It seems beyond the scope of cinema: conveying the world of scents and smells, rather than sights and sounds. And yet, German director Tom Tykwer (''Run, Lola, Run'') has achieved that impossible feat, and his ''Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer'' is one of the best films of 2007. It's the story of an insane psychopath who has an incredible sense of smell. This gives him an enormous advantage - he can literally sense the presence of human beings (and recognize them) from almost a mile away. It is especially useful if one's goal in life is to capture and kill young women. But ''Perfume'' isn't an ordinary horror movie. Yes, the body count is impressive. Yes, the villain is as merciless and as completely devoid of compassion as Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kruger or Michael Myers. But this film is closer in spirit to ''Tom Jones'' or ''Oliver Twist'' than to ''Friday the 13th'' or ''Halloween''. For once, the social conditions of 18th century France are evoked here with a realism worthy of Charles Dickens and Emile Zola. Also, the sexual content of the film is unbelievably strong. Few writers besides Marquis de Sade have dared to go as far as Patrick Suskind in the exploration of links between carnal desires, insanity and perversion. As Roger Ebert writes in
his review, ''Why I love this story, I do not know (...) I cannot explain. There is nothing fun about the story, except the way it ventures so fearlessly down one limited, terrifying, seductive dead end, and finds there a solution both sublime and horrifying. It took imagination to tell it, courage to film it, thought to act it, and from the audience it requires a brave curiosity about the peculiarity of obsession''.
