Monsieur Hire

Touching, lyrical, erotic, suspenseful and enigmatic, Patrice Leconte's (Girl on the Bridge) 1989 psychological drama Monsieur Hire is both "a twisted love story and a tragic thriller" (London Sunday Times). in a provincial French apartment block, Monsieur Hire (Michel Blanc) endures a solitary life of dulling work as a tailor and vitriolic scorn from his neighbors. Hite's only solace is an occasional night out bowling and the voyeuristic admiration of his neighbor, the "ravishingly erotic" (Entertainment Weekly) Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire - Vagabond, a Nos Amours), a beautiful, free-spirited woman conducting a heated love affair through un-drawn curtains across the way. But when police discover the nude body of another young woman in a nearby vacant lot, Hire becomes the prime suspect in a murder investigation that brings him face to face with the object of his desire even as it threatens to ensnare them both in a web of deceit, accusation, lust, and guilt. Adapted from the book by celebrated Belgian crime novelist Georges Simenon, Monsieur Hire is a film of gorgeously muted widescreen color and "funereal beauty" (The Washington Post) that coolly unpacks sexual obsession and romantic love with an intelligence and understated intensity "so delicate that you almost hold your breath for the last half-hour" (Roger Ebert).