There's no doubt that this is an excellent production and that it deserves to enter the canon of good French films, but there is one big problem with it: Michel Blanc is too young. He was 37 when the film was made, and Sandrine Bonnaire was 22. The age difference is not sufficient to make him a pervert or her flirtation with him bizarre. Blanc does a good job being the weirdly solo Monsieur Hire, but he never looks old enough. There's a lack of shock value in the central scene of her flirtation with him. Perhaps, too, it is because writer/director Patrice Leconte is coy about revealing Bonnaire's nakedness, and that of her killer/lover.
Review of Monsieur Hire
