Monsieur Hire
by Patrice Leconte
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Sandrine Bonnaire Michel BlancDirector: Patrice Leconte
Brand: Kino International
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 81 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-11-20
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Model: 5532
Studio: Kino International
Product features:
- MONSIEUR HIRE (DVD MOVIE)
Movie Reviews of Monsieur Hire
Movie Review: the fine line between love and obsession...
Summary: 5 Stars
MONSIEUR HIRE is a small masterpiece of a thriller that has stood the passage of time very well. By allowing the characters to reveal themselves with subtlety and patience, and stressing their struggles (inner and outer) and their attempts to live with and liberate themselves from these struggles, rather than relying on setting and artifice, Patrice Leconte has removed the stifling effects of chronological and spatial imprisonment that mar so many otherwise well-made films. It has a contemporary feel, but the foundations of the story and the humans who populate it could easily be transplanted into any era - love, loneliness, the suspicion of anything / anyone different, guilt, and erotic obsession are all present here, manipulating, infecting and challenging their mortal carriers, driving them to consequences none of them could foresee.
Leconte wrote his script based on a 1933 Georges Simenon novel, filmed as PANIQUE in 1947 by Julien Duvivier. Rather than attempting a `remake' of Duvivier's film, he explains that his intention was to create `a new adaptation...a more personal work, expressing my own ideas...to express something that's very interesting to me, and troubling, which is erotic desire.'
The film opens with a scene that presages the voyeuristic aspects that will be developed more fully later on - the pale body of a young woman lies on the ground, almost in an attitude of peaceful sleep; a man - revealed as a police detective - looks down on her. We next see him sitting in her apartment, and hear his thoughts in a voiceover: `Pierrette died on her 22nd birthday. That's no age to die, people say...as though there were a right age.' He goes through her things, a type of post-mortem voyeurism in itself, and muses that `...no one will hold her in their arms again...', giving voice to the importance of touch, which will be repeated throughout the film.
Monsieur Hire is a lonely man in the deepest, most painful and desperate sense. Utterly alone, he occupies a small, neat, apartment. He is self-employed as a tailor, a solitary pursuit. His neighbours revile and distrust him - the children in his building make him the target of their taunts. Yet our first glimpse of him shows him extending kindness to one of them, his hand on the head of a little girl, gently directing her gaze toward a doorway, having her count to 30, in an attempt to rid her of a headache, or perhaps a fear, by distracting her. When she finishes counting, he removes his hand, comfortingly saying, `See...? All gone now.' He then walks away, headed to work. She looks after him with a gaze that is so unaffectedly childlike that it could not possibly be coaxed from a performer, a mixture of gratitude and unease - the man who has been the butt of so many pranks has shown her a moment of honest compassion.
His aching solitude finds an outlet in his furtive viewing of Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire), a beautiful young woman who lives in the building across the way. Rarely closing her curtains, she goes about her life unaware of his attention. She casually dresses and undresses, bathes, does her chores, and conducts a love affair with her fiancé Emile, all under Hire's steady gaze. It is only by a chance flash of lightning one night that she sees him in his window and realises she is being watched. Shocked and frightened at first, she becomes fascinated with this voyeuristic stranger, and sets up a situation through which the two of them meet face to face.
The detective investigating the murder turns his attentions early to Hire, his instincts aroused by the fact that the man is a loner, neither liked nor trusted by those who live around him. Hire discovers that he's under suspicion - the detective mentions the murder and the fact that a cab driver saw a man in a dark overcoat running toward Hire's apartment building. The tailor shows no emotion, then gets in a jab of his own - `It can't be easy to still be just a detective at your age.' The detective continues to question Hire frequently, both at the shop and apartment, sometimes brutally hounding and embarrassing him.
The friendship that grows between Alice and her voyeur is a strange one - her feelings of shock and danger seem to disappear rather quickly, and she admits enjoying being watched. The love that Hire has felt for her for some time grows even stronger - and while initially he attempts to remain emotionally aloof, he begins to let his feelings for her become known, a little at a time.
Her fiancé is apparently engaged in some sort of activity that has caused him to be under the gaze of the police...yet another type of voyeurism. The tension he feels under this scrutiny begins to cause emotional cracks to appear. As their relationship becomes less satisfying and more unpromising, Alice appears to rely more on Hire emotionally. He finds himself beginning to believe that the two of them might share a future together as the film comes to its climax.
More than simply presenting the story itself, the film invites the viewer to contemplate the fine line between love and obsession. Hire's voyeurism of Alice, while inarguably disturbing, is pursued by him with a pure heart and an almost meditative calmness. He is never seen stooping to physical self-gratification in relation to his voyeurism. This is an extremely complex character - the skill with which Michel Blanc fleshes out his part is immense. Sandrine Bonnaire, who has given many standout performances in her career (including her portrayal of the young vagrant in Agnès Varda's 1985 masterpiece VAGABOND) is absolutely perfect. Patrice Leconte has brought forth something very special in Monsieur Hire - a finely-crafted, intelligently written and well-acted thriller, to be sure...but a treasure of much deeper proportions that will reveal more and inspire more thought and contemplation with repeated viewings, even after the ending is known to an open-minded and appreciative audience.
Summary of 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. 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).Similar DVD Movies
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