Tale of murder and intrigue explores the under-reported sense of smell in a tale from the blockbuster novel by Patrick Süsskind. Grenouille is a baby born into squalor. Uniquely, he is born with no scent of his own - causing his own mother and a string of surrogate mothers to shun him. The result of his not having a smell, however, is that he develops the strongest sense of smell imaginable. He becomes apprentice to a famed perfumer (Dustin Hoffman) who hones his craft and makes his fortune from the talented waif. Obsessed with wringing the essence out of anything with a smell, the idea soon occurs to Grenouille that a beautiful, fine smelling woman might make the perfect tea bag for a vat of wonderful perfume. Things take a dark turn for the smell-free youth, however and, in his quietly desperate, compulsive search for new odours, nothing can stand between him and the scents he wishes to acquire.