Scent of a Woman

A film that grips you from start to end with it's strong and intense performances; two extreme personalities who happen to share one thanksgiving weekend, and in that experience find their lives changed forever.

If Al Pacino, got an Oscar for his acting as a corrosively cynical, blatantly rude and yes, plus blind Colonel Frank Slade , Chris O'Donell as the boy growing into manhood deserves no less, with his subtle, subdued and constantly on the edge performance.

Charlie (O'Donell) is a scholarship (aid) student at a snobbish British school, and while all his classmates get to go on fancy holidays, he answers to an advertisement of a weekend job looking after Colonel Slade (Al Pacino).

While Charlie is all set for a weekend in Slade's home, Slade has other plans. He wants to spend the weekend in NewYork, all fancy and indulgent, stay in The Waldorf Astoria and experience a woman, a long held fantasy. While his deeper fantasy is to rest his head on the lap of a woman who loves him, he lets that remain fantasy, and sets out to fulfill atleast the fantasy of a woman.

He's so obsessed, he can tell by the scent the soap and the perfume of a woman. There's almost no woman is the whole movie. What we see of his fantasy is his walking into the hotel and out again as Charlie waits for him outside. Guess that's where, literally for him and metaphorically for us, comes in the title of the film.

There's also a subplot of Charlie being in a tight spot at school, on the verge of being expelled if he doesn't talk on some others, a dilemma he carries through the movie.

Slade is tough.  The movie starts with Slade sitting in a darkened room, his glass of whiskey in hand (forgot to add alcoholic to his description) and stacking insult after insult on Charlie, his voice and expression ferocious and dramatic to say the least..."don't shrug you imbecile, I'm blind". Several times you think Charlie will break under that constant provocation and pressure.

It's connect and tenacity at crazy levels. 

As film it's hard to sit back and  be objective on, it seems to suck you in further with each scene. And while it seemingly ends on a positive and bright note, it leaves you with a sadness and poignancy as end of weekend they each go their own way.