Monsieur Hire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A reclusive man (Michel Blanc) who constantly spies on his neighbor (Sandrine Bonnaire), in the French film Monsieur Hire (1989), may have murdered a young woman.  A police detective suspects he has.  What we learn, however, is that he has fallen in love—an un-eccentric act.  Is it eccentric, or abnormal, that the Bonnaire character, Alice, might be falling in love with him?

Directed by Patrice Leconte, Hire reminds us that we can never predict what other people will do, except when we can.  I haven’t read the Georges Simenon novel from which the film is adapted, but without a doubt, in my head, the film is worth seeing—and worthy.  It isn’t dated and its cast fills the bill agreeably.  In ’89 it proved French movies could still be respectable.

(In French with English subtitles)