Andres Herrera

A teenage boy who suffers from acute sensitivity to sunlight becomes the prime suspect in a horrific murder case after moving to a small village located in the mountainous region of northern Spain. Santi is a 16-year-old boy who lives in Barcelona with his mother, Julia. But while most folks who live in Barcelona love to bask in the golden rays of the sun, Santi has a rare genetic disease that causes him to suffer severe sunburn and eye irritation within minutes of exposure to ultraviolet light. Ideally, Santi would like to move to the shadowed town of Laponia in northern Sweden, but funds are tight and his mother cannot afford to make such a move. After a heartfelt discussion between mother and son, Julia agrees to move to Arrozas de Valdeon -- a remote village shaded by the high mountains on all sides. But strange things are happening in Arrozas de Valdeon; animals are disappearing, and rumors are circulating that something in the woods is responsible. One day, Santi witnesses the killing of a young boy. No one else was around at the time the murder occurred, making Santi the prime suspect in the eyes of the villagers. In order to avoid any further problems, local policeman Antonio asks Julia to keep an especially tight leash on Santi as an investigation gets under way. But Santi is determined to prove his innocence, and after making friends with a local girl named Angela, the pair sets out to locate the mysterious creature rumored to stalk the local woods. What Santi and Angela discover over the course of their investigation can only be described as tragic. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

An obsessive French perfumer with a highly developed olfactory sense and an all-consuming drive to capture the essence of love eventually resorts to murder in his unrepentant quest to find the key ingredient for his recipe in director Tom Tykwer's adaptation of author Patrick Suskind's best-selling 1985 novel. Born in a fetid fish market and raised in a dilapidated orphanage, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) toiled his childhood away in a rank tannery run by the thuggish Grimal (Sam Douglas). Subsequently obsessed by smell, Grenouille's keen olfactory sense becomes so finely tuned that it eventually overpowers such human qualities as love and compassion. Though he has indeed discovered the unmistakable scent of a woman, Grenouille finds it impossible to connect with the fairer sex on any sort of meaningful level. Roaming the streets of Paris late one night, Grenouille catches the scent of a young girl selling plums and impulsively strangles her, later sniffing her nude corpse in a twisted attempt to preserve the distinctive scent in his memory. After persuading legendary perfumer Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman) to take him on as an apprentice, Grenouille travels to the town of Grasse in Southern France in order to learn the art of enfleurage at a firm run by the highly respected Mme. Arnulfi (Corinna Harfouch). It is there that Grenouille becomes dangerously drawn to the vestal aroma of the young and beautiful Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood), the daughter of widower merchant Antione Richis (Alan Rickman). Soon driven to madness by such a pure scent, the spellbound Grenouille continues to claim the lives of the numerous young girls in a tragic attempt to bottle the impossibly elusive smell of virginal womanhood. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide