Serie Noire

Frank Poupart sells goods door to door on instalments, hates his life, hates his wife, and talks to himself out loud. In one house he meets a young girl, and what starts there turns by degrees into a plan for murder, except Frank is not a good criminal, only a desperate man. Alain Corneau adapted Jim Thompson's novel and wrote the screenplay with Georges Perec, moving the action from fifties America to seventies France. Patrick Dewaere plays it as something close to a physical collapse, and it is now counted among the most cited performances in French cinema. The suburban setting is empty, muddy and unfinished. Who it is for: viewers who like the cruel, funny branch of noir. Who it is not for: anyone needing a sympathetic character, since nobody here is saved.