MONSIEUR HIRE Movie Review

M. Hire

As Monsieur Hire spends his time trying to peer through his window at his beautiful young neighbor (Sandrine Bonnaire), he is transfixed—and appalled—by her romantic encounters. But, as Hitchcock showed us in Rear Window, voyeurs pay a price for their obsession, and rarely remain passive observers no matter how desperately they try. Patrice Leconte's brilliant and hypnotic thriller Monsieur Hire, based on the Georges Simenon novel Les Fiançailles de Monsieur Hire, is both the story of Hire's repressed desires and a murder mystery involving unrestrained passions. We watch breathlessly as these events unfold, knowing that we're in the hands of a master filmmaker. Leconte's storytelling is subtle and absolutely lucid at the same time; he adds layer upon layer of meaning and possibility while building tension visually, using dialogue only in the rare instances when an image won't do. Michel Blanc seems to have a direct pipeline into his role, and Sandrine Bonnaire is tantalizingly mysterious as the object of his nearly desperate obsession. Denis Lenoir's widescreen cinematography and Michael Nyman's sad, mocking score are absolutely right. Just 81 minutes long, Monsieur Hire is a perfect, darkly glistening gem. (If you're seeing it on video, be sure it's a letterboxed version.)

NEXT STOP … The Tenant, The Hairdresser's Husband, Ridicule

1989 (PG-13) 81m/C FR Michel Blanc, Sandrine Bonnaire, Luc Thuillier, Eric Berenger, Andre Wilms; D: Patrice Leconte; W: Patrice Leconte. Cesar Awards ‘90: Best Sound. VHS, LV FXL, FCT, IME