Alain Corneau's Série Noire adapts Jim Thompson's novel A Hell of a Woman to the bleak suburban outskirts of Paris. In an astonishing, kinetic performance, Patrick Dewaere plays Franck Poupart, a neurotic door-to-door salesman spiraling into madness after falling for a young woman (Marie Trintignant) trapped in exploitation by her own aunt. What begins as desperate infatuation soon turns to robbery and murder, with Corneau rendering Thompson's nihilistic American pulp into something unmistakably French—a harrowing portrait of social despair set against the grey banlieues of the 1970s. Five César nominations including Best Actor for Dewaere.