A whimsical and deeply affecting film, Perfumed Nightmare demonstrates a powerful poetics of contrast that interrogates the nature of progress and the meaning behind our desires. Filmed in the midst of Martial Law, the movie buzzes like a live wire - the busy unbusiness of the provinces, the sweltering heat of the tropic, and the wild burn of a nation (in mannish form) desperate for difference. Peeling back the (dog) smiles and unserious humor reveals the unglamorous reality of the post-colonial: extraction and exploitation.
4/5
