I actually met a producer of Stanley Kubrick's who told me that Kubrick had never even thought about doing Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer. He just read it and didn't want to do it - that's it. There's a myth around that he said it's not filmable. But he never wanted to film it.

I wanted to create a believable feeling for 18th Century reality in the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer. I didn't want this typical film feel of strange people in strange costumes, not really knowing what to do or how to move. If you put an 18th Century costume on Alan Rickman, it looks like he's been wearing it forever because he inhabits the stuff. He is a character that can really travel in time as an actor and transform into this 18th Century person with seemingly no effort.

Alan Rickman has a huge presence in the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer and takes an enormous amount of space with no effort. I wanted somebody to leave behind a strong impact and be a threat for Grenouille. When Alan takes to the screen, we immediately know there's an intelligent, instinctive and powerful force, so if he's pursuing our main guy then our main guy is in trouble.

I love that contradiction between the ugly and the nice. It's shot in a very gourmet way in the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer. But then Grenouille doesn't differentiate between what's commonly considered to be good smells and bad. He just takes it all, like a true collector does.

With Dustin Hoffman, I just enjoyed the fact he was this flamboyent and very ironic person that still followed my desire to make Baldini in the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer not simply a joke, or the funny guy, but also a personality and a character.

Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer - is exactly the movie that I was dreaming of. Nobody influenced us in the direction we took, or forced us to go somewhere we didn't want to go. Obviously, it is a movie that goes some ways that aren't conventional.

I think ultimately one would say that the most difficult part of the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer is the balancing of the main character. To get him being so ambivalent in his whole conception.