“Go get the blow-dryer. And the Kouros. It’s in the bathroom cabinet with the sheets.”

There’s a mystery surrounding the men’s cologne mentioned in Roman Polanski’s Carnage. “Kouros” should refer to the Yves Saint Laurent aromatic fougere fragrance created by Pierre Bourdon and launched in 1981, but the bottle seen in the film is different. Moreover, later in the movie the cologne is referred to with a different name (“That smell of Kronos is killing me!”, says Penelope), and this adds more mystery to the matter.

[Post updated in May 2015] Now I can finally say the mystery has been solved. Thanks to the invaluable help of Claire, a reader of this blog, we can give an identity to the bottle: it was created by Ateliers Dinand for the film. The Parisian design studio, which has created some of the most famous perfume bottles (including Vera Wang Princess, Dolce & Gabbana, several Mona Di Orio perfumes and the new version of Yves Saint Laurent Opium), came up with a sleek bottle and a box whose pattern reminds me of Andrè Courréges logo.