But I disagree with you about the ending, the ending is excellent and most appropriate..why he walked all the way back to Paris if he wanted to die…well, if you notice during the movie Grenouille has very high endurance he walks from town to town without even noticing fatigue, the only thing he feels, sees or hears is what he smells….so saying “hell, why walk a marathon to Paris when I can die anywhere?” this line of thought is not even in his dictionary…and in a sense he went back to hs place of birth, the filthiest, smelliest place on earth and having no more goals to live for, he submerges himself by his perfume and gives himself to the crowd that is so filled by desire it resolves to eating him in a matter of minutes….

Well, I disagree, the excessive use of perfume, shampoos…. indicates a high awareness of one’s sense of smell and the desire to offer to our noses delight. Perfume is to our noses what beauty is to our eyes, what music is to our ears what kisses and chocolate is to our taste and so a society inundated by artificial scents in order to improve on the natural ones can only better appreciate this movie…. So perhaps this movie was not released on a big scale in the US because the book was originally German and it is widely read in all of Europe but not in the US? Maybe?