The movie Perfume

I recently saw the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) and was very impressed. I have a couple of thoughts to share about it.

The main triangle involves a father, his daughter, and the main character Jean-Baptiste and I think this along with The Big Lebowski and other, illustrate the importance of the failure to renounce sibling incest and surmount the father complex or phallic trito.

There is a really wonderful point in the film when instead of condemning the main character as psychotic in pursuit of finding himself a perfume made up of beautiful women to make up for his own lack of a smell, the plot changes to represent the perfume as, in fact, being magical.

Jean-Baptiste releases a handkerchief with the perfume and the crowds gathered for his execution call him an angel and then engage in an orgy that effaces the difference between the sexes and generations as young and old, man and woman, man and man, and woman and woman remove their clothing. There is a particular focus on the old bishop becoming involved. This follows Chasseguet Smirgel's insight into perversion.

The narrator states that Jean-Baptiste could have sent a perfumed letter to the pope or fascinated a king and secured himself world domination if he wished (the anal phallus) but instead he returns to the marketplace he was born. He dumps the perfume on himself and becomes cannibalized there in what I've identified as the volar trito stage which is the first stage of an ego ideal that is measured by a permanent social ontology.  

More to come....