Monsieur Hire (1990)

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. Hire 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, À 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). Product Description

"All I do is look"

It's been said that film, by its very nature, is a voyeuristic experience. We are, after all, not within the action itself; we're viewers who derive entertainment from the misery on screen, much like that of Schadenfreude. In "Monsieur Hire," we are, in a sense, voyeurs to a voyeur. As sexually-charged as the word may be, it is not sex that's at the forefront here, but rather the themes of aching loneliness and love, specifically the extent to which a person will go to assuage an emptiness that burrows deeply, as well as the injustices and alienation suffered by those who are merely different.

Monsieur Hire (Michel Blanc) is a loner who's hated by his neighbors and a constant target of pranks. An oddity who's avoided and gossiped about, he says only that the loathing stems from his refusal to socialize. (His full surname is Hirovitch. Could his being Jewish perhaps be the reason for the animosity? I don't know; I'm just guessing.) As reprieve from the dull routines of his tailoring business and the torment of his neighbors, M. Hire takes to watching a beautiful young woman in a flat across his. His nightly vigil consists of stoically watching her in the dark, fascinated by every movement she makes. It soon becomes clear that he's not motivated by perversion or prurience, but adoration that evolves into love.

Her name is Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire) and she accidentally discovers what M. Hire has been doing. Instead of reporting him to the police, she cultivates a relationship with him, and we are led to believe that Alice shares M. Hire's affections. But Alice is in love with a boyfriend who treats her shabbily and refuses to commit. When a murdered woman's body is discovered in the woods, M. Hire's neighbors single him out as the likely murderer despite the absence of evidence and motive. How his love for Alice is tested and how it ties in with the murder are best left unmentioned. Suffice to say that there's a clever twist to this story that takes one by surprise.

Based on a story by Belgian novelist Georges Simenon (creator of the Inspector Maigret series), "Monsieur Hire" is an understated and somber film that consistently refuses to provide easy answers. Instead, the viewer is forced to intuit, from one scene to the next, the feelings and motivations of its protagonists. The mystery or the whodunit seems only incidental to the narrative. I admire the film's artistry, from carefully set up shots that actually replace dialogue (in my opinion, much harder to achieve) to the smart script that slowly builds the story, luring me toward a startling end. However, despite the careful attention, I'm not sure I fully understood M. Hire and Alice to the degree I was meant to. Even now, as I'm recalling certain scenes, I'm not confident that I've interpreted them as they were intended and cannot determine if this was due to a failure on my part or the film's overall ambiguity. I'm straddling these two possibilities and giving it four stars.

(Language: French with English subtitles) July 7, 2008

Finally on DVD

This is one of those great but little seen foreign films that I managed to catch on Laserdisc probably 15 years ago. Great that it's now out on DVD. Strange, different story, told well..good transfer, okay audio. January 14, 2008

Overlooked Masterpiece

I know many people who have never heard of this film. What a shame. First time I saw this was on my VCR years ago and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. Sandrine Bonnaire is enchanting, perhaps even hypnotic in her portrayal. Michel Blanc is just right for his part of the obsessive male lead. Recently saw Vertigo which is about obsessive love and although different I much prefer Monsieur Hire. This movie reminded me of Vertigo as far as mood and Bonnaire totally eclipses Kim Novak December 29, 2007

Men who love to much...Ouchh

Men who love to much...Ouchh!!

Monsieur Hire (1989-Dir Patrice Laconte).

It has been mentioned that Patrice Laconte is the best example of a non-stereotyped cinema in France,(What has been colled "Cinema de Auteur") Paradoxically a citizen in the Country in which such artistic category was born. But I complete disagree with that. Man and feelings in all the small and soft variation those are the main issue of Patrice Laconte films.
How is to be a man in our western societies? Tha is his main quesion to be answered along his movies. Of course as a man himself there is always a bias, but that is also part of the game.
The long waiting DVD of "Monsieur Hire", is now out at the end of 2007, is almost a Christmas gift for the followers of Patrice Laconte's cinema. Monsieur Laconte is a man that lives like a shadow, he wants to be not detected, and because that he is hated. He is follow by a detective because in a case murder of a young women around the area, Monsieur Hire is the number one as the suspect list. The people around which he interact barely when it does also think that he was the murder and attacked him. He is a tailor, of Jewish origin (His grandfather and father were changed the name of Horrowitz to Hire). That also could imply another motive for to be an out-side like, why he is afraid of the surrounded and never respond to the object that people through him (Anti-Semitism in Frances in well-known in small towns).
He use to attend with local prostitutes but suddenly he found that he did not want to do that any more, he didn't want to be with a women in that conditions. He already noticed that a beautiful woman lives across his wndow, Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire), of which is love platónicamente, as any person timid. But, he is not foolish and sees more, however, the idealization by "love", and by his beloved, it becomes the moral standard. That is what use to happen in early romance poems of French Provence in which to fall in love, out of marriage, with another person was an institution just because LOVE (As a mythological god). Alice notice that M.Hire is looking at her, and she start to play the old game of "female cat and male mouse"

It is then that we find another topic in common in Patrice Laconte films: "Love" as feeling that catalyses what we are already, nothing more than that, by fortune! This occurs, even in the movie "Man on the train" (2002), where two men the poet and the gangster, feel love and nostalgia for the lives of each one. The poet (Jean Rochefort) by being a robber, and the thief (Johnny Hollyday), to live in a bourgeois home yhat closeness a museum museum.

Monsieur Hire is a further proof that love not enough in people relationships, that one-sided love complicates (there is one of Alice with his boyfriend about such issue: " ...If you love me a little, if one loves a lot that is enough").
Because M. Hire is a sincere, loving, sentimental, and with a house of his own in Switzerland that he puts on his woman feet. So it seem the outcome in many ways of human kin evolution, about the characteristics of man, humanized by women, that is not always value by some women, blinded by another man ("The real love" of course).
M. Hire is afraid of love, she loves to another guy, which is a lost case, and with which may not have a future, but she plays the chess pieces on the board. Finally we found that women in love are blindfold.



Rafael J. Salin-Pascual
December 29, 2007

Interesting low-keyed thriller

Just short of a masterpiece, this is an interesting low-octane thriller that works as both an erotic whodunnit and study into the human psyche. LeConte is the master of nuance and though there's not a lot of story going on, the action takes place between silent moments and character restraint. Director LeConte has the gift of capturing human behavior and passion lyrically and poignantly; the film is often touching and rings utterly true. I don't think this could be translatedly effectively into an American film, and once again I tip my hat to the French for capturing the uncapturable. Later LeConte pushes the limits in the sumptious metaphor laden "The Girl On The Bridge", an absolutely stunning piece of work. October 22, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...