Synopsis
Sylvia, an industrial scientist, is troubled by strange hallucinations related to the tragic suicide of her mother.
The Perfume of the Lady in Black
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Spoken Languages
Alternative Titles
O Perfume da Senhora de Negro, O Perfume da Senhora de Preto, Le Parfum de la Dame en Noir, To aroma tis gynaikas me ta mavra, Poseídas del demonio (el perfume de la señora de negro), Аромат дамы в черном, Le Parfum de la dame en noir, 黑衣女人的香水, Das Parfum der Dame in Schwarz, Hölgy feketében parfümje, Парфуми дами в чорному, 더 퍼퓸 오브 더 레이디 인 블랙
Genres
Themes
Releases by Date
Theatrical
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Italy
15 Jul 1976
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Mexico
09 Sep 2010
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France
Physical
27 Jan 2016
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Germany18
01 Jun 2021
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FranceU
Releases by Country
France
09 Sep 2010
- Theatrical L'Étrange Festival
01 Jun 2021
- PhysicalU DVD & Blu-Ray
Germany
27 Jan 2016
- Physical18 DVD and Blu-ray premiere
Italy
29 Mar 1974
- Theatrical
Mexico
15 Jul 1976
- Theatrical
Popular reviews
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Il Profumo Della Signora In Nero lacks the black gloved bladed bloodshed typical in most gialli... but the deep paranoia/emotional instability Polanski riff on display here cuts as sharp as any razor.
Filled with vibrant production design and vivid hues of blue, pink, and purple that perfectly outline the spectacular hallucinatory descent into madness atmos, The Perfume of a Lady in Black unravels deliberately... culminating in a banger of an ending that knocked my socks of this go around—I’ve always liked this movie, but now I love it... and Mimsy Farmer is an absolute powerhouse here... owning the screen and putting on a clinic as to why genre fans appreciate her foray into Italian genre pictures.
I LOVE that this sets aside the usual genre tropes in favor of a psychological giallo supreme.
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Spooktober IV: Morte all'italiana
Another film in which a woman moves to an exotic location and suddenly begins experiencing visions and losing her wits. However, while it is brought up early in the film, I would call bs on anyone who claims to have predicted the WTF ending. Up until that point, the film has a great moment of psychological dread thanks to some creepy visuals, a haunting and catchy score by Nicola Piovani, and an excellent turn by Mimsy Farmer, who does a great job of depicting the gradual descent into madness that her character experiences.
All In all, while it meanders a lot and could have easily been shortened a few minutes to give us a tighter movie, there's enough great stuff here to make it a worthwhile watch for genre enthusiasts.
Spooktober IV: Morte all'italiana
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Planet of the Vampires
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Perfume of the Lady in Black
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No one does unbalanced *with a dash of psychotic* quite as well as Mimsy Farmer; this Italian psychological thriller (/quasi giallo) is proof of that. Perfume has a bit of a slow buildup, but those who stick around, will be rewarded with a roaring display of paranoid insanity. Absolutely wonderful!
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Let me tell you that Mimsy Farmer can do ANYTHING in high heels. She can run, walk across gravel, go backwards, run up stairs, you name it. It’s all pretty damn impressive.
It looks like I’ve fallen into another giallo hole and no I don’t need any help because I quite like it here. This is actually my first time watching this one and it is a beautifully dark tale of a woman’s descent into her own hell with a little voodoo cult action on the side. Mimsy is always a pleasure to watch and when she waxes crazy it’s one of my favorite things. I didn’t really know anything about this going in and it was nothing like I…
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![nathaxnne [hiatus <3]](https://a.ltrbxd.com/resized/avatar/upload/1/9/5/2/4/3/shard/avtr-0-80-0-80-crop.jpg?v=2d9f35eba8)
I have no sense of smell, not really. I can smell sometimes very faintly, exceptionally strong or unpleasant odors. When I read about what something smells like, I have to think of it in terms of visual or auditory analogies. This also has a corresponding reduction on the sensitivity and range of my capacity to taste things. Additionally, I have a deviated septum which is usually blocked anyway due to allergies and inflammatory response. I have read that the sense of smell is the best at evoking involuntary memory. Unseen particles connect directly when inhaled, lighting up pathways in the brain. It makes sense too on an biological level, that smell and memory would be connected, so that we would…
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Colors in the dark. A splash of red on white. An off-white suit against blue walls. Against green light splayed over jars and plants on shelves. A light green suit in a botanical garden. Yellow light in a dark staircase. Flashing green lights beyond the curtains. Muted tones amidst the bright; bright tones against bright tones. At times, the colors draw your attention to detail; at times, they draw your attention to a person; at times, they draw your attention to a mood; at times, they simply overwhelm. At its finest, giallo is a genre of colors and tones. it is mood and mystery married by the rainbow. It is shadows in impossible hues. It is a visual labyrinth (those mirrors reveal so much). This film reminds of The Seventh Victim, but it steps back from plot and theme and lets mood and style take over. It relishes its palette. It feeds the eyes.
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“We’ve changed too. We used to eat our enemies, now we study engineering.”
“I can save her” cinema. 24 roses and 2 lilies. On rewatch you can see it all laid out from the start. Evil rites and sadistic games as “a test of man’s mental strength over his weaknesses.” Still incredibly cryptic, but the clues are all there. A cut to the hand and allusion to Nosferatu licking the wound. But this isn't Transylvania. Silvia is in Technicolor Wonderland, pushed down the rabbit hole into a nightmare more real than she (or we) could imagine.
Every tender pain from Silvia's past is used against her. An absent father lost at sea. Her happy place, the zoo, invaded. Her mother’s…
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There's a terrible brittleness to Silvia (Mimsy Farmer, who is glorious in the role), as if her existence is so fragile that, if touched in just the wrong (right) way, she'd shatter, and vanish without a sound. Only at work does she have some solidity. It's a place where she's valued for what she knows, and the way she helps a machine larger than herself work — she's a concrete cog in a concrete place, one built on order and predictability.
Outside of work, however, she's pale and self-doubting, sometimes seeming to require the presence of her often-remote boyfriend (Roberto, played by Maurizio Bonuglia) in order to exist at all. She drifts through the world like a ghost, moving through…
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Francesco Barilli's film is a waking nightmare; draped in beautiful scenary and architecture. Mixing past and present in a surreal dreamlike logic, the film is short on plot but heavy on atmosphere. The action focuses on Sylvia, who is becoming troubled by visions seemingly related to the death of her mother. Mimsy Farmer delivers a powerhouse perormance in the lead role; owning every scene and delivering a captivating performance. Nothing is ever explained and instead the film just lays out its events, meaning most things could be taken a number of ways! And the film has a habit of pulling the rug out just when things are starting to make sense. The ending is especially esoteric but strangely brilliant in…
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Deep red, white and BLUE. When I saw Amuck last month I wrote about how I have a preference for Italian thrillers that resemble Alice in Wonderland more than Agatha Christie. Here the link is made explicit with Mimsy Farmer's character, Sylvia, quoting Lewis Carroll. Unlike Amuck, however, in which our Alice chooses to chase the rabbit down the hole, here we have the vague outline of a conspiracy that is pushing Sylvia into a confrontation with something horrific from her past. Generally, one can hope that at the very least this kind of movie will be trashy fun or a sturdy genre exercise. The direction and design of Perfume of the Lady in Black, as well as Farmer's performance,…
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less an actual giallo than a slow-burning but straightforward trip into insanity that employs a few giallo tropes (dreams/reality, labyrinthine conspiracy) to interrogate the genre's paralyzing fear of female sexual desire.
also, and i might be imagining things, but i think this film intends to subtly suggest that European hegemony in African countries earns the same inevitable violent blowback as an emotionally fragile woman driven mad by resisting her hidden instinct to be sexually dominated. so i guess chew on that.
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