All language subtitles for Nose.2021.FRENCH.WEBRip.x264-VXT

It's not bad.

It's green.

Incredible

It's oily ...

It's good for the arms.

The smell is still strong
because it's too fresh

Is seeing patchouli worth
a three days trip ?

For me it is

I had never seen patchouli like this,
here in Indonesia.

It's very important to see
the product in its natural habitat

to see both the method they use
and what the material looks like

I find it quite moving to witness this

This is where it all begins for perfume

Is this office representative
of what is going on in your mind ?

It's a bit of a mess...

...But I do know where all
the project trials are though

For me, a perfume is a land of sharing

Double kiss !

-What perfume are you wearing?
-Ah...

It's a special one.

You don’t want to tell me.

I can't recognize it.

-It's smells very nice.
-Yes.Thank you.

A perfumer is an artisan.

It requires creativity and intuition.

as well as a lot of expertise.

It’s a sort of...

fragile balance between these two aspects.

What are you working on now?

On the Dior Homme perfume.

How to balance...

a top note with a bottom note.

The top notes are the most futile ones.

They only last a few seconds or a
few minutes depending on their volatility.

Then we have the middle notes.

It’s the warm and generous heart of
the perfume... and it lasts a few hours

And then the bottom notes
that last longer.

They are long-lasting notes.
The ones you remember.

Depending on whether it is
eau de toilette or eau de parfum,

you get to these bottom notes more or less
rapidly and they drag you to the bottom...

All of this balance itself
and creates a kind of symphony.

-What is the bottom note?
-It’s elemi.

Elemi is similar to incense.

My aim is to bring them together.

I don’t know,
I haven’t figured it out yet.

But that’s the idea.

So...to try something new

This is...

...a note we stopped using.
People forgot about it.

-You're making it again?
-Yes, I personally love it.

It smells very nice.

And the smells lasts a long time.

Did you create
your first perfume for someone ?

When you start, you go through a training.
At the time, it was still a training.

-So you work with other perfumers.
-Of course.

And they have you do
what they don't want to do themselves.

The first thing I did was a perfume

intended to whet the appetite

-of bovines.
-Really?

-So they would eat the fodder.
-That's crazy.

My first real perfume
was Diva from Ungaro.

I made that perfume for my wife.

-For your wife.
-Yes.

-It has to do with desire and femininity.
-Always.

Perfume is about emotions.
It starts with an emotion

-and it leads to seduction etc...
-Of course.

So desire is of course
the underlying theme.

-What drives all your perfumes.
-Yes.

He often envisions perfumes
based on the people he meets.

It's no secret
that women inspire him a lot.

Brunettes, blondes... They're different
when it comes to perfumes and perfumery.

But...

For him, it's about finding
what people might like.

That's his challenge.

When he sees someone,
he thinks, "What would suit them?

What would I do for him or her?"

The person comes first
and then comes the inspiration.

-I'll go get my jacket.
-Okay. Let's go this way.

-Sure, this way.
-That way?

-Yes, this way.
-It's better this way.

-Is it better that way?
-It's nicer.

Okay, I'll just go get my jacket.

-It's starting.
-Did you notice I had everything planted?

-Yes.
-I had the conifers removed.

Yes.

-The gardener didn't want to.
-Why not?

I don't know, I said,
"No, plant the osmanthus,

it'll be nice when we walk past,
it'll smell.

When we go out as well."

François and I are united
by something very specific;

we must create the best perfumes
for our two respective Houses.

What we share is our passion,
our knowledge of the raw materials,

our olfactory education as well
since we are both from Grasse.

Have you seen the pomegranates?

Let's see. Yes, they're ready.

They're beautiful.

Here in Grasse, people have extracted
raw materials for four centuries.

They started mixing them
and making perfumes

that were based on raw material
they collected themselves

and materials that they imported and that
would go through Venice, like ambergris.

Grasse is a small town
of about 55,000 or 60,000 inhabitants

that enjoys the biggest amount
of knowledge in the world

regarding raw materials for perfumes

as well as the arts and skills
involved in making perfumes.

When you were born in Grasse,
when you have lived in Grasse,

when you were raised in a family where...

...the sense of smell
is as important as sight or hearing,

you don't have the same
background as others,

you're not cut from the same cloth.

There's a little bit of nostalgia about
being here since this is where I grew up.

I remember getting past here
early in the morning

because back then there were nightclubs
around Valbonne over there.

The road to get back to Grasse
went through here.

And since it was during
the summer holidays, in August,

the jasmine was blooming.

The smell of jasmine
came from right here next to us.

These memories are embedded in me.

This is one of my favorite smells

because it has a mysterious
and also magical side to it.

This is ambergris. This one is black

because it is relatively recent.

It's about 20 years old.

This one is grayer.

It's a bit older.
The name ambergris comes from its color.

This one is white.

It's one of the most sought-after notes.

Those three all have a different price.

But for perfumery, I prefer the gray one
or even the black one.

The black one is more wild.

What is it exactly?

It's a sort of concretion.

It comes from sperm whales.

They eat a lot of cuttlefish.

Cuttlefish have a bone,
but also a very pointy and sharp beak.

After a while,
the beak ulcerate their stomach,

so they secrete a substance
that wraps around the beaks

and they eject it.

It's lighter than water, so it floats.

Because of the effects of the sun,
the air and the sea,

it changes little by little.

Can you mentally create a perfume
without having any material?

A complete perfume? Yes, more or less.

In the same way as
when we read a formula, the recipe,

we manage to imagine
more or less what it will smell like.

The problem is this "more or less" part.

So between the idea
you have of the perfume,

and the formula you write down or read
in order to make a perfume,

there is a difference that we notice
when we go through the trials.

Which is precisely why we do these trials.

This is a formula, the recipe in a way.

There must be as much information
as possible on each line

about each material in the formula.

The number of materials
in a perfume varies a lot.

It depends on the perfume
and on the perfumer.

Generally speaking,

I would say there are between 15--
At least for me,

between 15 and 50 products.

The only thing that all Noses
have in common

even the young apprentices I have met
in schools, Brazilians, Japanese, Chinese,

is the passion for recording smells.

It's being passionate enough
about the idea of recording smells

that you're willing to go through
the torture that is a perfumer's training.

I think the only comparable field in terms
of difficulty when it comes to learning

is maybe ballet.

Every day, every single day,
you have to refresh your own memory,

You memorize the smells
and combinations of smells all over again.

And that is still not enough to guarantee

that what you will make, your recipe,
will be exactly what you envisioned.

Just like a ballerina can dance on pointe
425 times in the morning

and still fail on the 426th time
because she messes the spin.

The worst for us is to think you know.

It's very important
to keep up to date.

It's getting back to the baseline.
I'm constantly practicing.

Yes. Every day.

It's musky.

We can say they're all musky indeed.

Of course the musk ketone
isn't at ten percent but at one.

It's not soluble.

And the vulcanolide is at 11.

Can you smell how strong it is?

I'm surprised by the Galax's start.

The Vulcanolide has touches of pear to it.

-Vulcanolide is indeed--
-It's exceptional.

-It smells of undergrowth.
-It's very earthy.

Yes.

The undergrowth above Grasse,

-in October, during mushrooms season.
-Yes.

-The first flowers of the morning.
-They're nice.

With François, it was the meeting
of a lifetime for me on a human level.

I was lucky enough
to take part in a conference in 2006,

the World Perfumery Congress
which was held in Cannes that year.

After the conference, a man came
to talk to me and we had coffee together.

Humbly, he told me, "I make perfumes

and I am looking for
exceptional raw materials.

I want to bring back exceptional materials
to the heart of my creation

and I would like to start
with flowers from Grasse

and I would like
to embark on this journey with you."

I thought, "Okay, he makes perfumes."

And then he showed me his card:

"François Demachy,
perfume creator for Dior"

I knew his name
but I had no idea it was him.

I just thought...

"Wow!"

They have a strong smell.

It's strong.

We spoke the same language...

...I would talk to him about the flowers,
the harvest, organic production,

about things from my everyday life,
things that I get up for in the morning.

So he understood right away,
because he is from Grasse too and he has

tremendous respect for the raw material.

He said, "When you're working,
you need financial security.

so that all your energy is put at the
service of the raw material and beauty."

And that's it.

Have you ever sensed
a small touch of bubblegum?

-Yes, but not this time.
-Sometimes.

They need more sun.

-Exactly.
-Yes. Alcohol, basil and all that.

These are lactones.

Perfumes are a language
everyone understands

but few people can speak.

How did I become a grower?
It's the story of two people.

It's not only my story,
it's Rémi and Armelle's story.

We both wanted
to do something together at some point

related to the ground

because we both come
from families of farmers.

We experienced it when we were young.

Rémy more than me
since he worked at his grandparent's farm.

For me, it was just
when I was on holidays.

So we embarked on this journey.

At the time, Rémy kept working

as we needed to put food on the table
for the family.

I started going forward
with the administrative procedures

and I learned the job with Carole.

I spent a lot of time at her place

digging, tying things together,
cutting, harvesting...

It was a long-term endeavor.

Between the time we first had the idea and
the day we planted our first rose bush,

a lot of time went by. Four years went by.

I would still help Carole from time
to time, she would train me at her place.

One day she told, "Next week
François Demachy is coming,

it would be good for you to be here,
I will introduce you."

So I met him at Carole's.

I briefly explained my project,

and after our conversation,
François said, "I'll come and have a look.

I'm interested, I'll come have a look."

You need to know
what we had planted back then.

We had planted 700 rose bushes
about 20 centimeters high.

Seven hundred rose bushes
is nothing at all.

It's like a garden.

It's nothing for a grower,
you don't get anywhere with that.

François came around after a little while.

Of course I was expecting
his arrival feverishly.

He was supposed to arrive early
in the afternoon

and he arrived late in the afternoon.

Early in the afternoon,
the weather was rather good.

When he arrived,
it was raining cats and dogs.

The view was so blocked we couldn't
even see the other end of the field.

All I had to show him was my little square
of rose bushes in the middle.

I suddenly realized what was happening.

I thought, "Oh, my God! You had him
come here, you have nothing to show him,

the weather is crap, he won't even realize
how beautiful the site is."

We hadn't done much to it yet,
but the site was beautiful.

And...

François is discreet and reserved,

so he didn't say, "Wow, this is amazing!
Let's work together, it'll be great!"

He didn't say much and when he left
and I closed the door behind him,

I told Rémy, "It's over,
we can start planting onions

and have a couple of sheep,
but it's over for the roses."

It was actually not over at all,
he called back after a while

and he said,
"I'm interested in your project,

I'd like to talk more about it."

-Happy Birthday!
-Happy Birthday! Thanks a lot.

Perfumery comes from distillation.

Men have always tried to capture scents

in a physical form.

And so they started using distillation
to capture the quintessence of the smell.

And in the 1920s and 1930s,
they started using extraction,

meaning they would use
the plant with a solvent

in order to extract everything they could;
its smell and other elements.

This factory's facility in Grasse,
is the historical part.

We work in a traditional way.

This is the part
where we transfer to perfumers

the knowledge
we have garnered over decades.

We do it the way we used to,
we do the same things we did 50 years ago,

so that perfumers can find the same smell
they remember, which hasn't changed.

-Do you know Mr. Demachy?
-Of course.

He has a good knowledge of perfumery,
about the products and the smells.

He knows all that very well,
he's from Grasse.

He knows the raw materials
and what they can be used for.

I worked a lot on making products for him.

They were very particular products.

He gives us an idea of what he wants,
and if he like the scent he will use it.

For me, it was meant to be.
I was born here, in the region.

Very early I was familiar
with orange trees, jasmine, roses, etc.

When you get into this job,
you can never leave it.

It's purely addictive.

September 1st marked the beginning
of my 60th year with Robertet.

It's been quite a while.

You weren't born yet.

Oftentimes, perfumers ask me

how many rose petals
their product requires.

So we tell them we need 700 kilos
of flowers for one kilo of absolute.

There are 350 flowers
in a kilo of flowers,

So you multiply the number of roses
by 38, the number of petals per rose,

and you have the total number of petals.

Here, we are
in the middle of the know-how.

If I want to develop
or modify a particular scent,

I can go to the factory, it's very close.
I can get there in ten minutes.

I can talk to the professionals,

smell the trials
and even do the trials with them.

It's an undeniable advantage.

And the whole part
with the zest that you see inside.

It smells very nice.

Let's see if I can do it.

When you see a bitter orange,
you see the difference immediately.

The bitter orange tree
doesn't have the graft.

-The trunk--
-It's very cylindrical.

It's cylindrical and it has a few thorns.

-Yes.
-That's its wild part.

-So it's only feminine?
-Feminine.

But the skin is different,
look at the zest.

Look at the difference
between the two zests.

-Yes.
-It's easy to see.

-Here you go.
-Fantastico.

-It has ribs too.
-The Fantastico also has ribs.

It's smaller.

-Always.
-Always.

Okay.

This one is feminine.
These are the three.

-The best one.
-The best one is the Fantastico.

It's like a murderer who comes
back to the scene of the crime.

It's important to be on the site

so you can both smell and feel.

Because it's an atmosphere.

The atmosphere is part of the product.

And coming to Italy
is almost like being home.

We all have an Italian side to us.

The food is excellent,
the girls are pretty,

everything is nice.
It's all about the colors.

We may have to pick them up?

Yes.

If it warms up, there’re
going to be some anyway.

Like an actual harvest, yes.

Yes, this time of the year is reward time.

We have worked all year: we pruned,
cared, weeded, and hoed them,

and then it’s harvest
time, and that’s the reward.

Magic.

It’s a special time,
and it’s luxury farming!

We work in the midst of aromas
and colours.

It’s a kind of woman’s thing.

-Well, it’s increasingly a woman’s thing.
-Yes.

-And how do you treat the land?
-With a lot of respect.

Not really organic but trying to go
back to how farming once was using

observation, common sense, and trying to

-deal with each thing in its own time.
-There...

You wouldn’t know, huh? Yes, I know.
You need to come back and see it!

-Let's take a little bud.
-A fertile one.

Hyper fertile, exactly.

-It's the right term.
-Only this?

-Yes, this is the bud.
-So you extract the bud.

Yes, this is what ends up growing.

-This is the bud.
-Yes.

All the genetic information is in here.

-Okay.
-And we insert the little bud.

-No way!
-Yes.

It must be done for each bush.

There are currently
about 20,000 rose bushes here,

so we've done this 20,000 times,
plus all the other times.

-You don't do that every year, do you?
-Fortunately, no.

-Just once and it's a centifolia for life.
-So it's good for 15 years.

Exactly.

And...

a month later, in August,

around August 15th,
our little bud will have grown

and we will have a new centifolia.

But the rootstock,
the mother plant, is resistant.

We weaken the shrub rose

-so that it gets the necessary sap.
-It's like surgery.

-And then it grows.
-It's like going to the doctor's.

This is why we have this quality
and this resistance.

It's essential.

It's a lot of handling.

Exactly.

And this is what it looks like.

You end up with this.

In a nearby high school in Antibes,
they have started teaching all this again.

-Nobody knew how to do it anymore.
-I can do it now.

Being able to do it is different
from doing it thousands of times

on a big scale and successfully.

-That requires years of experience.
-Really?

This is the problem with Carole,
she makes everything look easy.

-Okay.
-It has to be done.

François is like Charlie and his angels.

There's the blonde one, the one with
the light brown hair and the brunette.

When I met François,
I got to visit the creation lab.

It was a dream come true for me.

Being able to do this job

and for my work
to be appreciated by someone...

Organic agriculture is a difficult job.

I barely have any machine, we don't use
pesticides, it's all handmade.

And I can see when he comes to the field,

or at least I think
and I hope that he enjoys

smelling the product of the ground
directly from the tree or from the bush.

So I always enjoy his visits.

I have the feeling that he is happy
and therefore that I have done a good job.

Here, it's for you.

It's a farmer's job,
there is no doubt about it.

We work in the field
and we wear boots most of the time.

We don't see flowers
for very long during the year.

We see roses for four weeks
and tuberoses for a little longer,

but in the end,
the fields are green most of the time.

They don't blossom for long.

It's party time when they blossom,
but that doesn't last.

It's a real farmer's job.

But at the same time,
we work for an industry

that, for me,
embodies what makes us humans.

We don't work to feed ourselves,
we work to smell good.

It's a puzzling idea. It's very special.

And these two worlds coming together
is something I appreciate a lot.

We've got our feet in the mud and our head
I don't know where, maybe in the clouds.

Driving tractors is actually
what you like most about your job, right?

Yes.

Can you imagine at school,
40 years ago, if I had said,

"I want to be a farmer,
I want to live in the countryside"?

They would have said,
"Yuk! That's horrible."

Whereas these days, they say,
"That's good, but it will be difficult.

You must know the ground,
the circle of life, the earth."

We look for our environment and when
we find it, we are like a fish in water,

because we are in sync with what's beneath
and above us, with the flow of time,

with the rhythm of the seasons, with
the things we do regularly, cyclically.

It probably has to do with a sort
of primary and reptilian balance.

Can you help me?

How much is there in this? Two kilos?

Just to give you an idea,
the iris roots that we plant

are planted today.

This is 2018, we have to wait
for three years after planting the roots

before we can unearth them to use them.

We have to clean them and trim them.

After that, there is only three tons left
out of the four tons we dug up.

Once those three tons
are cut and dried up,

there is one tone of iris left.

But we must wait another two and a half
years for it to be properly dry.

Then we treat it,
we grind it and we distill it.

And from that ton,
we get about three kilos of butter

or 300 grams of irone.

So you start with a truck filled
with four tons of fresh roots

and seven and a half years later,
you end up with 300 grams of irone.

That's why products are very expensive.

You need to be passionate and curious.

A perfumer is someone who is curious.

When three people are walking
in the wilderness,

if there is a perfumer,
he is always at the back.

He stops everywhere to smell the products,
to touch the plants, etc.

Creators are extremely curious.

You must be curious about everything.
About everything and everyone.

It is an interpreter's job.

We stock up mental pictures
at a certain time

and when we start creating the perfume,

all of that comes out.

We need all that.

Can we go in and have a drink?
-Sure.

He has a passion for well-made products,

for beauty and skills, because
you don't become an expert by chance.

I suggest we go through the Merlots first

-and then we can try the others we have.
-Yes.

Because we must match them
with the others.

The point of this tasting
is to understand the parcel of land.

By tasting the wines regularly
at different stages

we get a clearer picture little by little.

You're after the 19th.

I've tried this one.
I didn't like it much.

I like the aromatic
of the 17 and 17.1 a lot.

And their characters too.

I like this one.

It's a little timbered.

It brings out its power.

Yes, and green pepper
is very present in its bouquet of flavors.

-Yes, it's its aggressive side.
-It has pyrazine a side to it.

Yes.

I first met François as we were working
together with Cheval Blanc on a book

in which we shared our views,
Cheval Blanc's and François Demachy's...

on senses, on olfaction,
on the sense of smell.

I soon related to his job,

because the sense of smell
is part of our daily decisions.

Beyond the emotion,
which is 80% of what we feel...

You feel an emotion
when you smell something and taste a wine.

The difference between anyone's emotion
and the work of a professional

is that we must dissect,
analyze, explain, rank

and make decisions based on emotions.

It can be impressive

when you enter the tasting room
of a famous vintage

and you start
giving your opinion on the wines.

François spontaneously said,
"I like this. This one is a bit grassy."

You can tell he has expertise.

Is there one
you like better than the others?

-This one.
-The one on the left.

-Me too.
-The other is still too alcoholic for me.

In order to remember a precise smell,

you must remember
everything that comes with the smell.

The moment you smelled it,
what was going on around you,

the people who were there,

the lighting,
which is important, the sounds, etc.

The smell jasmine
definitely reminds me of my grandma.

I was always in the field with her.

My grandma would put
jasmine flowers in her corset,

so she always smelled of jasmine.

When I smell jasmine,
it's like there is magic in the air

and she is still with me in a way.

When I trained my sense of smell
for my first job,

the perfumers would make me
smell a lot of raw materials.

They said, "You're pretty good."
I thought, "Okay."

Then they made me smell a perfume and
I thought, "This the perfume of my life."

I had never smelled anything like it.
It was like magic, I loved it.

I went home and I told my mom,

"You don't know this, it's an old perfume
you've never heard of."

My mom would wear Diorissimo
and nothing else.

I said, "Smell this."
She said, "What is it?"

I made her smell it and she said,
"I know it, it's Jolie Madame."

I asked, "How do you know it?"

"It's the perfume I wore
when I was pregnant with you."

I think the smells
that have affected me the most

are horrible smells
that bring back bad memories.

The most violent and painful one for me

is the smell of my preschool's bathroom.

I sometimes smell it
in public places like hospitals

and as soon as I smell it,
I am three again

and I feel excruciatingly sad,
it's terrible.

I can picture
my schoolteacher's green trouser.

That's it. It's horrible.

When you are faced with the memory
or the reality of a smell

that you haven't smelled in 30 years,

you are immediately brought back
30 years in the past.

It's... instantaneous.

It's very accurate.

It's the inside you need to smell.

He associates pictures

and situations with perfumes.

He creates a photo library for himself

that he associates with smells.

It's available to him in his brain so that
he can associate a picture with a smell.

-Can you use ginger for perfumes?
-Yes, we use it.

We have two main products;

the essence,
after distillation,

and a CO2 extraction which brings out
the smell of fresh ginger like this.

For example, if you ask him
about a perfume that inspires to travel,

he goes through his travels photo library
and the smells associated with it

and he can come up
with about 2,000 raw materials.

It's unbelievable.

This is great.

You can trust me.

In perfumery, the hardest thing
is usually to decide

when the perfume is ready.

When is it done?

When is the song perfectly played?

"Okay, it's done,
let's stop and save it."

I understand François completely
when he thinks, "No, let's do it again.

Let's start again and adjust it."

And you can never just add something
like a flower on a salad.

It doesn't work like that.
Everything shifts, the whole formula.

Anytime you pull out a brick,
the whole Jenga tower is affected.

It's endless
and it can become and obsession.

We're all sensitive to smells,

because they bring us back to our culture,

it's an identity.

It even goes beyond that,
it's what we are made of.

The human side is essential.

It's the most important part for perfumes.

What is more human than a smell?

Our joker is missing today.

There isn't much left.
We're nearing the end.

It makes me sad.

Orange blossoms don't last very long.

When we see there aren't many buds left,

we know it's only
a matter of days before the end.

We'll have to wait until next year again.

No, Georges!

To this day,

I still think
it was pretty bold of him to bank on us,

because it wasn't our job,
we were just starting.

And yet he agreed to work with us.

I think it's...

It's cool of course that a House,
since he represents a brand,

that a House like his would make
that bet and trust in people like us.

Perfume is about human relationship.

There is always a human connection.

To me, Perfume is in its essence...

...a human journey.

Inherently, flowers are sexual organs.

That always plays a part.
We are mammals so...

It's not far from the topic of sex.

And that makes us dream,
so that's how it is.

Does being a perfumer help with women?

Yes.

It might be one of the reasons
I chose this job.

Maybe that's why.