Monsieur Hire

KINO
Street: Nov. 20
Prebook: now
> Suspenser about sexual obsession from one of France’s most reliable filmmakers.

A well-known name in the U.S. arthouse market, Patrice Leconte has been making films for nearly 40 years, with many of his most accessible efforts from the past two decades—The Hairdresser’s Husband, The Girl on the Bridge, The Man on the Train and, most recently, My Best Friend—securing respectable theatrical and home-viewing audiences. In this film, Monsieur Hire is a lonely tailor (Michel Blanc) who becomes voyeuristically obsessed with a young woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) in the window across the street who’s involved in a heated love affair. Hire is happy enough just peeping, but when he becomes the prime suspect in the murder of another young woman in his neighborhood, he comes face to face with the object of his desire, and things go downhill from there. Based upon a book by the celebrated crime novelist Georges Simenon, the evocatively shot Monsieur Hire is a creepy little tale of misguided romance, sexual obsession and tragic consequences—in other words, much of what we’ve come to expect from contemporary French cinema.

Shelf Talk: In its homeland, Monsieur Hire received eight Cesar nominations, including ones for best film, actor, actress and director. The film made some noise stateside during its limited theatrical run and picked up the Best Foreign Language award from the Boston Society of Film Critics. It’s a familiar title to Francophiles and they’ll want to know that it’s available.