Product Details

• Format: NTSC, Color
• Number of tapes: 1.0
• Studio: Flower Films
• Run Time: 92.0 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B000A2KU9O
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #61,955 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
PERFUMED NIGHTMARE: Winner of the International Critics Award at the Berlin Film Festival and a Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival. There is nothing evern remotely nightmarish about PERFUMED NIGHTMARE. It's an enchanting and poignant experience, a totally original seriocomic creation with an infectious and exuberant energy. The film is a semi-autobiographical fable by a young Filipino about his awakening to, and reaction against, American Cultural Colonialism. Born in 1942 during the Occupation, Kidlat spent "the next 33 typhoon seasons in a cocoon of American dreams". This, then, is his perfumed nightmare: the lotusland of American technological promise. In his primitive village, he worships the heroism of the Machine, the sleek beauty of rockets, the efficiency of industrialism. He's the president of his village's Werner Von Braun fan club. he longs to visit Cape Canaveral, to experience those shimmering images he knows from movies, from soldiers, from the Voice of America. "One of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere" - WERNER HERZOG

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars everyone owes it to themselves to see this film, August 17, 2006

By	Matthew Sutton (washington dc) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Perfumed Nightmare is really a bricolage of film and narration whose form is as much if not more essential to its premise than any pretensions to a highly allegorical plotline, although that is certainly here as well. This "movie" self-references the medium of film and the conventions of the cinematic art, in a very personal, inevitably human, and occasionally poignant story about a young Phillipino man's naive embrace of, and later disillusionment with, American cultural imperialism. This movie's production is analogous to the Jeepney the protagonist drives in his village outside of Manila.

The story he tells about the confluence of identity, aspirations, culture, and globalization is universal.

The approach taken with The Perfumed Nightmare may seem somewhat dated today, but its accessible, yet sensitive tone and compassionate handling of the material (for whatever reason I'll resist analyzing) make this film oddly charming and definitely unforgettable.