European Films

Continuing where the previous adventure of sleuth Rouletabille, the 2003 film Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room) left off, Le parfum de la dame en noir (The Perfume of the Lady in Black) is more comic and airy than its predecessor. In the storytelling department this second adventure has much of the same problems as Le mystère, but director Bruno Podalydès keeps throwing enough silly antics and stunning, sun-drenched locales at us that one almost forgets. While it was the director's intention to make a film that would be comprehensible without knowledge of the previous film, his adaptation of the second book in the Gaston Leroux-penned adventures of Rouletabille would be difficult to follow without any previous knowledge of the characters' backstories. In Le parfum, the backstory of Rouletabille himself becomes important as it is revealed in the first act that two characters introduced in part one are in fact his parents.

 

The film’s narrative thrust consists of two stories that follow one another; first there is Rouletabille’s long-awaited reunion with his parents and secondly there is another crime to be solved at the castle on the Côte d’azur where his mother is staying -- and perhaps his father, too. The detective, again portrayed by the director’s brother Denis is once more joined by the clumsy photographer Sainclair (Jean-Noël Brouté, in top form) and it is he who steals the show this time around. The single most hilarious scene has him creating an insufferable noise when he is trying to hide in an atelier-come-tool-shed and accidentally sets a domino-like tripping of objects over one another in motion; the prolonged and carefully choreographed scene connects neatly with the similarly handmade “special effects” in the opening sequence of the first film. A spot-on slapstick scene featuring a canon-ball in the film’s last minutes displays a similar attention to choreography and detail.     

 

The acting is again top-notch all around, relying on much of the same troupe of character actors as the first film (including the director himself) and the cinematography by Christophe Beaucarne is crisp and luminous, taking full advantage of its seaside settings and the lush period detail of the costumes and props. Le parfum de la dame en noir could have been a lot better had it been more condensed and focused on its story, but its best scenes are not related to the story at all and cutting them out would likely make this film a lot less entertaining. Thus Le parfum de la dame en noir is a compromise of both worlds that can be enjoyed by those who have seen -- and loved -- the first and even those who thought that part one needed a dire injection of laughs.

 

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