Alain Corneau’s 1979 film Série Noire is considered to be one of the best movies based on Jim Thompson’s work. Certainly, when compared to something like Michael Winterbottom’s recent adaptation of The Killer Inside Me, Corneau’s adaptation of A Hell of a Woman stands apart, though largely because of its atonal sense of humor. Punch-drunk though Franck Poupart (Patrick Deware), Série Noire’s protagonist, may be, especially when compared to The Killer Inside Me’s Lou Ford, he’s ultimately just as desperate and manic. The key difference is that Lou Ford is almost a two-timing sadist while Franck Poupart is a sadist that thinks of himself as a masochist.
Série Noire begins with a deceptively comic scene of Franck dancing by himself in a barren lot. This desolate tract of land is a place that Franck will return to a couple of times over the course of the film, but this time it’s the site where we’re introduced to him. We don’t have enough information to judge him beyond this act of self-absorbed clowning around; he strikes action poses with a portable radio and flounces around for his own entertainment. This scene might be funny if it didn’t last as long as it does and wasn’t set in the middle of nowhere underneath an overcast sky.
