Watching ‘Only God Forgives’ on DVD again tonight – that lurid, oneiric, pungent, light-soaked film starring Ryan Gosling and Kristen Scott Thomas set in Bangkok, I find myself drifting back in my mind’s eye again to the backstreets of Jakarta, last August, where I had forgotten that I had found, quite unexpectedly and to my surprise, a vintage perfume shop, open at midnight, ‘selling’ rare and unwanted perfumes that probably nobody was ever going to buy: dusting and unloved, but proud and upright on shelves, which I tested for authenticity (they definitely weren’t fakes: that was real Monsieur Rochas).
We never found that same street again, but I fortunately did take a couple of photos, much to the older daughter’s consternation, as she barked out information to her older relatives, sitting out of view in the beyond of the shop.
On those shelves, which I suddenly found myself longing to revisit and so checked to see if I still had the pictures, you can spot bottles of Habit Rouge, of the original Vetiver, in strange cologne shapes that I had never seen before; and look at those old vintage Riccis and Rochas’…
I didn’t have enough cash on me at the time and so didn’t come away with anything (on reflection and on doing some currency conversion they certainly weren’t cheap), but if you had been there, and had had the money on you, what do you think you might have have bought?
Mystère?
Silences?