Perfume

This series is NOT AN ADAPTATION of Sueskind's outstanding novel. It is just loosely inspired by its ideas. For those fellas who might complain about it and exspect some Grenouillian time travel into modern times: don't watch it, spare us your disappointment. Those people who like dark atmospheres, detective stories with twists and unsettling characters will love this brilliant piece of art. And that's what it is, a piece of art. Cinematography and production design really did an impressive job by creating such aesthetic beauty in so many pictures, sometimes resembling enigmatic paintings. All characters are lost and seem to loose its ground beneath their feet. The narration is slow paced with long camera shots. The surroundings are grey and dreary but it matches perfectly with the story, which at some point leaves the viewer disturbed due to its explicit and gory scenes, underlined by a fantastic score. This piece of series does not take you by the hand, delivering evidences piece by piece, and has a rather unconventional way of story-telling. Just watch it in one row and get caught in a maelstrom of this cold, sad and misty world, where everybody has to hide something. I really loved it.

I have not read the novel Parfum, so I have no way of knowing if it's an attempt at an adaptation. I it doubt since the novel is such an integral part of the plot. Props for atmosphere and acting here. I watched it with subtitles and heard it with English dubbing. At times, the subtitles and dubbing were using rather different ways of saying the same thing. Kind of fascinating. It was a good mystery/crime story and the writers made use of the multi-episodes to gradually reveal a bit more of the mystery. I found it difficult to tell the boys apart when they were younger (exception being Toothless) and couldn't quite figure out who was really Elena's boyfriend back in the day. The writers made good use of flashbacks.