Bay Area–based film critic Dennis Harvey is a longtime correspondent for Variety as well as a contributor to the S.F. Bay Guardian and sf360.org.

A disheveled door-to-door salesman, Frank Poupart (Patrick Dewaere) is one of those guys who can make a bad thing worse. It just comes natural. He's a spoiler, specializing in his own life, a dismal thing slowly unraveling in a drizzly Paris suburb. While hawking his wares, Poupart comes upon an offer he can't refuse: in exchange for a mohair housecoat, he can have Mona (Marie Trintignant), a bona fide baby doll. From here on, you can feel the infernal heat rise in this rendering of Jim Thompson's A Hell of a Woman. When nearly mute Mona gets her moist mitts on Poupart, it's all over: his stumble turns into a tumble as they plot to rob her mangy aunt. As Poupart, Dewaere doesn't need a hard sell. Without a second thought, you buy his worn-out, deranged lowlife toying with oblivion. Stuffed into a soiled trenchcoat, it's Dewaere's ill-fitting and feral charm that makes him the perfect fall guy in Thompson's bleak world.