well, that was weird.

The trailers for this film were well-done. It was because of those trailers that I decided to read the book, which was, in short, a fantastic and interesting read.

Suskind’s prose are beautiful, and the visuals of the film definitely reflect them. However, the story itself was far too intangible to be adapted into a decent movie. Most of the movie consisted of the main character running about sniffing the air. We could not tell what was going on in his mind, which took out much of the story. Without the aid of Suskind’s writing the story seemed outlandish (which it is, but Suskind managed to suspend disbelief in the book, while the movie fails to do so.) Unfortunately, no amount of good acting can repair a flawed storyline (at least for the big screen anyway).

Another thing that bothered me: Why did they feel the need to cast a very attractive actor for the role of Jean-Baptise? The point of his character is to be repulsive, a cockroach, the most reproachable person of mankind who dies in an ironic fashion. He hates the world and they hate him. In the book his horrid appearance allowed the world to hate him more. This dark teenager with the doe-like blue eyes is hardly detestable.

Good cast (excluding the main character), good cinematography, but no suspension of belief. For me, this film was an incredible disappointment.

This is so amazingly beautiful. It’s violent and sexual without being crude. It’s like medieaval art on film or european films. It’s almost religious in nature. And it’s about love and pain. It’s amazing and even a bit funny.

I never read the book, so I wasn’t expecting the ending at all. It went off into an even weirder and more ridiculous ending than I could have ever imagined and I loved it for that! It embraced it’s inherent wackiness with such gusto that I had to giggle and found it quite enjoyable.