EMPIRE OF SCENTS
Capturing our sense of smell
LENEZ (THE EMPIRE OF SCENTS)
out of 5 Documentary
Directed by: Kim Nguyen
Running time: 84 minutes
Quebec director Kim Nguyen takes a sharp left turn, following up his Oscar- nominated 2012 film Rebelle with Le nez ( The Empire of Scents), a meandering docu- mentary on our sense of smell.
It’s an elusive thing to try to capture on film, so the director circles around the topic, interviewing a variety of people with thoughts on the subject. New York writer Molly Birnbaum lost her sense of smell following an accident, and tells of her destabilizing experience adjusting to a world without odour.
Other interviewees include: Quebec wine expert François Chartier, whose book Taste Buds and Molecules: The Art and Science of Food and Wine inspired the film, explaining our multi- faceted relationship with smell, from emotion to memory; Italian truffle hunter Giorgio Barbotto, who blindfolds the director in order to take him to his secret spot to pick the fungus, which he claims has aphrodisiac properties; German “Vulva” perfume creator Guido Lenssen, who explains his obsession with creating a scent that evokes that of a woman’s sexual organ, and the elaborate lengths he goes to in order to achieve it; and Yu Hui Tseng, a Gongfu tea ceremony master who tells of the intricacies of the time- honoured ritual, and its beneficial effects.
Running through the film is talk of the mythical appeal of ambergris, a dark, solid matter produced in the digestive tract of sperm whales. Somewhere between malodorous and divine, it is much sought after and used in many expensive perfumes. Some of the more intriguing moments occur as Nguyen’s subjects try to describe the scent of ambergris when it is put before them.
If it sounds a little all over the place, that’s because it is. Though intermittently stimulating, the film lacks a strong narrative thread. We are far from the gripping drama of Rebelle. The subject is interesting, but Nguyen doesn’t go far enough with it; aside from a few thought- provoking tidbits, The Empire of Scents underwhelms the senses