MONSIEUR HIRE

| 1989 (New Release: 2022) – 80′ – Digitally restored -Thriller, Crime, Drama, Film Noir, Classic.
Written by: Patrice Leconte, Patrick Dewolf.
Based on the Book by: Georges Simenon.
Directed by: Patrice Leconte.
Starring: Michel Blanc, Sandrine Bonnaire, Luc Thuillier, André Wilms, Eric Bérenger, Philippe Dormoy, Marie Gaydu, Cristiana Réali.
Official Selection: Cannes International Film Festival 1989.
Official Competition TAFFF 2022 (International Premiere Digitally restored version).
In French with English subtitles.
A Cohen Media Group release. |

Michel Blanc’s nuanced performance, Patrice Leconte‘s refined visual style, and Denis Lenoir’s moody cinematography are perfectly in sync with George Simenon’s elegant prose in this beautiful adaptation of the author’s 1933 detective novel, Les Fiançailles de Monsieur Hire.  More an in-depth study of loneliness, longing and betrayal than a murder mystery, the film is made up of minute, carefully-observed details, placing its central character — a fastidious, reclusive tailor with an inclination toward voyeurism — under a veritable microscope.  Its telling manages to be simultaneously sensual and austere… and finally, heartbreaking.  Unapologetically romantic, Monsieur Hire is very different from the searing social indictment of Julien Duvivier’s 1946 adaptation of the same story, Panic, or of the original novel itself.  Leconte has chosen, instead, to paint a restrained portrait of vulnerability and unrequited love, set to the lush, rhapsodic phrases of Brahms Piano Quartet in G Minor.

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