"Monsieur Hire" is a tragedy about loneliness and erotomania, told about two

solitary people who have nothing else in common. It involves a murder, and the
opening shot is of a corpse. Monsieur Hire is a scrawny, balding middle-aged tailor
who lives by himself. Alice is a beautiful, tender-hearted 22-year-old blonde who
lives alone across the courtyard from Hire in the same apartment building.

On the night of the murder, a slight man was seen by witnesses running toward the
building. In his investigation among its residents, a police detective learns that
nobody likes Hire. Hire is the first to agree. He admits he seems to strike people
oddly. As a neighbor from across the hall peeks at him from his doorway, he asks,
"Want a photo?" As he walks through his courtyard, white powder is dumped on his
impeccable black suit.

Everything about Hire (Michel Blanc) is impeccable; his suit, his tie, the shine on
his shoes, the fringe of his hair so neatly trimmed. Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire) is
sunny, open-faced, with a warm smile. One night during a thunderstorm a flash of
lightning reveals a man watching her from the shadows of the apartment opposite.
This is Hire, who watches her for hour after hour, night after night: Sleeping,
waking up, dressing, undressing, ironing her clothes, making love with her lout of
a boyfriend, Emile (Luc Thuillier).

What does she do when she discovers this? The screenplay is based on Monsieur
Hire's Engagement by Georges Simenon, but it's nothing like his Inspector Maigret
policiers, much more of a traditional novel with carefully-observed behavior and
details. Simenon was fascinated by peculiarities of human personality, which he
described in elegant, simple prose, not unlike Leconte's controlled visual style
here.

The film is in color, but Hire's world is black and white: His suits, shirts, the
white mice he keeps in little cage in his tailor shop. His skin is so pale he might
never go outside in daytime. Alice, on the other hand, likes red: Her clothing, her
lipstick, the grocery big of ripe tomatoes she "drops" on a staircase so they roll
toward Hire as he opens his door. Does he leap to assist her? No, he simply stands
and regards her. What is the purpose of her contrivance?

Another day, she knocks on his door, but he doesn't answer. He must know it's her,
because he never has visitors and he must realize she's just left her own
apartment. She knocks the next day, and he invites her to visit a restaurant—in a
train station, which may be a clue to certain of his thoughts. Eventually he
confirms that, yes, he has seen her and her boyfriend making love. And he witnessed
something else that he believes explains her sudden and unexpected friendliness
toward him.

So it may, at first. But Alice's feelings for him grow more complicated, and she is
touched by his declaration of love. Her boyfriend Emile, on the other hand, is a
crude physical type whose idea of a perfect date is taking her to a boxing match
and ignoring her. Later, when he needs to sneak out of a window quickly, he steps
first in a cradle formed by her hands, and then on her shoulders. Hire shares his
secrets with Alice. He makes considerable use of prostitutes, he tells her, and as
he describes the process of a bordello her face reflects fascination, perhaps that
a man like Hire could have such erotic experiences and describe them so sensuously.
But he can never visit a prostitute again, he explains, because he has fallen in
love with her.

Hire is a man with many secrets. One night in the course of the police inspector's
investigation, he takes him along to a bowling alley, where he rolls strike after
strike flawlessly, even backwards between his legs, even blindfolded, and is
applauded by the regulars who have seen this before. He collects a payment from the
owner, joins the cop at the bar, tosses back a shot and says, "You see? I'm not
disliked everywhere."

What's going on between Hire and Alice? For that matter, what are her feelings for
the boyfriend, Emile? That relationship seems pretty standard for a film noir; he
seems to be a witless small-time criminal, and only her loyalty can save him. Her
devotion to him is pointless and undeserved, as far as we can see, and although sex
figures between them, she's too complex for that to explain everything. She's never
met a man whose love for her is more profound and devoted (and obsessive) than
Hire's. Emile wouldn't even be able to understand it.

At the center of this film is great sadness, captured in a late fast-motion shot
that slows for an instant to show a detail lingered on in heartbreaking slow
motion. Then the ending wraps everything up, but not to everyone's satisfaction.

Patrice Leconte, born 1947, is one of the most versatile of French directors. He
switches styles and genres from film to film, and you may be a fan of his without
realizing it. "Monsieur Hire" (1989) was his first considerable success, premiered
at Cannes, which is where I saw it. He also made "Ridicule" (1996), about a
provincial landowner during the reign of Louis XVI, who seeks to win the favor of
the court by practicing the quick wit much loved by the king; "The Widow of Saint-
Pierre" (2000), about a condemned killer awaiting death on a French-Canadian island
until an executioner can be imported from Paris; "Man on the Train (2002)" with
Jean Rochefortand Johnny Hallyday as a suave provincial gentleman's chance
encounter with a thief; and another of my Great Movies, "The Hairdresser's Husband"
(1990), again starring Rochefort as a man so enraptured by a small town hairdresser
that he marries her, buys her a beauty parlor, and requires only that he be allowed
to sit in it, day after day, adoring her.

"I don't think that a filmmaker is manipulating puppets," Leconte told me at the
2002 Toronto Film Festival. "On the contrary, I believe a filmmaker is more like a
chemist. You mix elements that have nothing to do with each other and you see what
will happen. The starting point for 'The Man on the Train' was the meeting of the
two actors. Put in a few drops of Johnny Hallyday, a few drops of Jean Rochefort
and look what happens. Sometimes it blows up in your face."

I asked him an obligatory question about the French New Wave and he said, "Well, I
didn't know Truffaut at all. I never met him, because he died too early probably.
One of the things that I loved most about Truffaut was that he loved movies. And I
would like that on my tomb: This man loved to make movies. "