The Perfume of the Lady in Black

I decided on a shot in the dark and watched:

 

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974).

 

Directed by Francesco Barilli and starring Mimsey Farmer (Four Flies on Grey Velvet) as the main character Silvia Hackerman.

One could be forgiven for thinking this is a Giallo, but it really isn't. It is Italian and made in the 70's, but it is a thriller/horror movie. There are few to none of the classic Giallo tropes in Perfume.

Silvia is a successful young manager at a chemical plant with a nice boyfriend, Roberto. She does however have a lot of anxieties that sometimes make her hard to deal with. We learn that she had an unhappy childhood, with an absent father in the navy or merchant marine (I'm not sure which). Her relationship with her mother was not good until the mother died while Silvia was very young.

Silvia's life starts getting stranger and stranger and soon enough she starts hallucinating, seeing her mother and others in such vivid imagery that it drives her into a panic. And this is where the movie shines. One could perhaps say that The Perfume of the Lady in Black uses an unreliable narrator, but that would be wrong. An unreliable narrator lies to you, while Silvia herself doesn't know what is real and what isn't. The movie might be lying to us, but Sylvie herself isn't.

Weird things keep happening, with mysterious things appearing in her apartment when she is out. A vase in a shop window vanishes and the owner swears she has never had such an item, only for the vase to appear in her home gift wrapped. It reminded me of the psy-ops the East German secret police, Stasi, used to unnerve and break down people they were after.

Little by little, Sylvia starts to break down, and this paranoia is felt by the watcher every time a person greets her, smiling politely only to stare after her with inscrutable suspicious glances. Some things can only be hallucinations and other things must be real since there is no way Silvia could know about it, unless she imagines things. Ultimately it is very difficult to know what did or did not happen. It could be a story about a mentally ill young woman, or a story about a victim of a sinister conspiracy. The wonderful creepy almost non-musical soundtrack really helps and the actors all do a credible job to create a really strange and creepy atmosphere.

I won't of course spoil the ending but I did not see it coming. In a way, everything makes sense by the end but you could be forgiven for believing that none or almost none of what happened took place.

The Perfume of the Lady in Black is a confusing movie that takes slow burn to a new level, but it had to. In order to slowly ramp up all the mysterious happenings, it needs to show you what is normal first. Some have compared it to Rosemary's Baby, and I can see why, but that isn't totally accurate either. The Perfume of the Lady in Black is it's own thing and you have to deal with it as it is.

So, do I recommend The Perfume of the Lady in Black? Yes and no. I had a great time in the end, but there were several moments when I was asking myself “What am I watching?”. I think it was worth it, but you have to be prepared to watch a really slow, strange film. If you are, go for it, otherwise watch something else. 

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great and safe week!