Perfume 2019

A divorced father, Guillaume Favre, fights hard to secure shared custody of his daughter while keeping his job as a chauffeur to provide a stable home. His life hinges on maintaining his income and a roof over their heads, and every driving job becomes a step toward a better future for them both. When a new client crosses his path, he meets Anne Walberg, a gifted yet highly self-assured perfumer whose extraordinary talent for constructing and identifying scents is matched by a demanding, sometimes abrasive personality. Despite her sharp edges, Guillaume stands up to her, and his principled stance convinces Anne to hire him as her sole driver as she takes on a series of assignments across France.

Their work together spans striking, scent-focused tasks: from capturing complex odors for a project in a Paleolithic cave replica in southern France to blending new aromas to mask an odour delaying a luxury handbag line. Guillaume witnesses Anne’s astonishing skill firsthand, and during a quiet restaurant moment she identifies the five major components of the waitress’s perfume, including the renowned fragrance J’Adore, revealing that she quite literally “invented that scent.” This revelation deepens Guillaume’s respect for her abilities, even as her solitary lifestyle and craving for social connection remind him of what’s at stake personally.

Anne’s success is shadowed by a physical blow—she wakes one morning without any sense of smell. She confides to Guillaume that this has happened before, four years after a high-profile stint designing three perfumes for a major company in the United States; one of those scents failed, tarnishing her reputation and complicating her career. Guillaume steps up to help again, and the couple faces a critical crisis when she is rushed to hospital after taking sleeping pills in his car on a return trip to Paris. A hospital visit by Professor Patrick Ballester, a specialist in olfactory disorders, helps her begin to recover, and Guillaume’s life takes a new turn as he loses his comfortable driving route and ends up in a lowly job tending a lawnmower at an airfield.

With Anne recovering and returning home, she discovers Guillaume’s new, more modest reality and confronts him about his future. He reveals that he will have difficulty affording a larger apartment, and she proposes a renewed collaboration that would allow her to re-enter the perfume industry while he remains by her side as her agent. In a parallel push, Guillaume uses these circumstances to pursue a fresh attempt at the custody tribunal, and his perseverance pays off: he secures a suitable home and gains joint custody of his daughter. The story closes with the two central figures on the cusp of a major venture, stepping into Dior headquarters to pitch new perfumes, a moment that symbolizes both professional renewal and personal reclamation. Throughout, the film maintains a measured, thoughtful tone that highlights the bonds between work, scent, and family, and it keeps its focus on the characters’ practical steps toward stability and growth.