The work of Jim Thompson has had a healthy life on screen, ranging from adaptations in America (The Getaway, The Grifters, The Killer Inside Me) and beyond, notably in Europe. Ahead of Yorgos Lanthimos tackling one of his most popular novels, we have a new restoration for 1979’s Série noire, which is adapted from Thompson’s 1954 novel A Hell of a Woman by writer Georges Pérec and director Alain Corneau.
Ahead of opening at New York City’s Metrograph this Friday, we’re pleased to debut the exclusive trailer for the restoration courtesy of Rialto Pictures. Starring Patrick Dewaere (Going Places, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs) as Franck Poupart, a down-on-his-luck salesman who gets involved in a robbery scheme that pushed him ever further into despair, perhaps humorously so. Named one of the best French films of all time by Time Out, see the trailer below.
In one of the strangest pairings in film adaptation history, prankish French modernist experimentalist Georges Perec (Life: A User’s Manual) writes American pulp bruiser Jim Thompson for the screen, with surprisingly harmonious and sometimes hilarious results. Sacked from his job as a salesman and dumped by his wife for his involvement with an underaged sex worker (Marie Trintignant), Franck Poupart (Patrick Dewaere) signs up for a robbery scheme, only to discover how much worse his luck can get. Dewaere, the too-soon-gone premiere wild man of ‘70s French cinema, gives a live-wire, no-holds-barred performance, playing the entirely-amoral Thompson protagonist to the hilt, his increasingly frenzied star turn driving the film headlong towards derangement. A queasy-funny downer, unmatched as a screen evocation of the purgatorial, sodden Parisian suburbs.
Série noire opens at Metrograph on September 27.