Cheap Monsieur Hire (Video) (Michel Blanc, Sandrine Bonnaire, Luc Thuillier) (Patrice Leconte) Price

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Customer Reviews of Monsieur Hire

"Young girls can be so unpredictable."
Monsieur Hire (Michel Blanc) lives alone in a small flat in Paris. He has no friends and leads a solitary life--going back and forth to his office where he keeps a few pet mice. Hire is a creature of habit. Everything in his flat is kept neat and clean. A slight figure, middle-aged, balding, and wearing a long black coat, he stands out as a detested, strange figure in the noisy neighbourhood he lives in. When the body of a young woman is found near Hire's building, he becomes the number one suspect.

Hire seems bored and annoyed with the idea that he's the suspect in a murder case. He continues on as always. Each night, Monsieur Hire watches a young woman, Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire) in the opposite flat. He has a perfect view--until one night she spots him staring at her. Most women would run, scream, call the police or buy curtains--but not Alice, she approaches Hire very tentatively, and so their sad and bizarre relationship begins.

Michel Blanc is one of France's finest actors. He doesn't get the roles of the romantic leads. He usually gets the character parts, and in this film, he really shows how talented he is. Blanc plays a frozen, stunted human being whose loneliness cannot be breached easily. While Hire longs for human contact, he also loathes and fears intimacy. Blanc conveys all this with tremendous skill. This film is directed by Patrice Leconte, and all of his films are excellent character studies. The excellent and haunting musical score is by Michael Nyman. The film "Monsieur Hire" is based on a book by George Simenon--the writer best known for his Maigret novels. If you love French cinema, get your hands on a copy of this film while you still can--displacedhuman

A Classic Masterpiece
I watched Monsieur Hire few years ago, and it has been a while since I've seen it again, but the impact that it has had on me lingers to this day, as one of the most chilling, disturbing drama/thrillers to come from France for a long time.
The film has been compared to Hitchcock, because Monsieur Hire keeps watching his sexy Neighbor, Sandrine Bonnaire from his window, voyeurism ala Rear Window, but I think the comparison is not totally justified.
Monsieur Hire, first and foremost is a character study of a very sad, misunderstood by all and very very lonely man. All the events that follow, up to the climatic ending, which I will not spoil, revolve around Monsieur Hire's character and failings as a human being and in society at large.
His obsession with Bonnaire is quite chilling, yet harmless. It is the love of a man who has closed himself to the world outside, and can only deal with his infatuation the only way he knows. And the sad thing about him, is the fact that his emotions are very transparent and lead to exploitation by some and hostility by many.
The success of the film is due of course to director Patrice Leconte..(he has made many other films, like Hairdresser's Husband, Rue de Plaisir, and Parfum D'Yvonne, but Monsieur Hire is still his best)..Sandrine Bonnaire, in the tradition of French actresses, is very intense and plays her character flawlessly..But all credit should go to Michel Blanc! What a revelation of an actor!!
Many have talked and written about Hoffman or DeNiro's acting methods, but one should really watch actors like Blanc to really appreciate 'method' acting! He is Monsieur Hire and Monsieur Hire is him. He does not play the character but is the character. He does not speak much, but his facial expressions speak volumes. There is a scene that I can never forget to this day. Blanc watching Bonnaire from his flat above. She is doing some ironing, and a thunder lights the dark night to reveal Blanc's face staring chillingly at her, with cold yet twistingly loving expression! What benefits the films as well, is its lenght. It is just over 80 mins, and the great talent of Leconte is to be able in this time to develop the characters, and the story without over analysis or sentimentality.
When the DVD market has been littered with so many unwatchable films along with the good and excellent, it is about time that this film gets its digital release to join the rank of the latter, and be appreciated as one of the most heartbreaking, chilling and sad films ever made.