Petite fleur (2022)

José, an Argentine comic-book artist, moves to France with his wife and their few-month-old daughter. Shortly after deciding to kill off “Coucou,” his most popular comic-book character, and stop publishing the strip, José is fired from the newspaper where he works. To support her family, his wife Lucie, who had been a housewife until then, gets a full-time job that she hates, while José stays home to look after the baby. One Thursday, while tending to his garden, José decides to ring his neighbor Jean-Claude’s doorbell and ask to borrow a shovel. Jean-Claude invites him inside and makes him spend time listening to jazz with him. José finds his neighbor’s authoritarian, sarcastic, and sexist attitude unbearable, and ends up killing him with the borrowed shovel while a record plays the jazz piece “Petite Fleur.” Frightened, José makes every effort to erase all evidence of the crime and waits for Lucie to return. She comes home more cheerful than ever. His fear of being discovered turns to confusion when, some time later, José is surprised to find Jean-Claude alive. Cheerful, Jean-Claude invites him over again. The following Thursday, José kills him again, and once again Lucie is cheerful and upbeat when she gets home. This begins to become a routine. The neighbor seems to remember all the afternoons he and José spend together, except for the parts when he dies. When Jean-Claude dies, Lucie not only seems happy but is also up for long romantic outings with José, such as evenings at concerts and nightclubs. On the other days of the week, however, Lucie seems dissatisfied with both her work life and her relationship with José. One day, she decides to start a nontraditional form of therapy with an eccentric man whom José calls a charlatan. José is disturbed by the things Lucie says she does in her sessions with the therapist, including masturbating in front of several other patients. In time, José decides to accompany her to the sessions, where he discovers that the therapist only pretends to speak French, despite actually being a Spaniard named Bruno Rodríguez. Bruno also seems attracted to Lucie. Hating Bruno intensely, José decides to kill him. During one of the group sessions, Bruno asks José to try to strangle him, while the other patients are forbidden to intervene. José is about to kill Bruno when Lucie, recognizing José’s violent side for the first time, stops him. Frightened, she later decides to leave the house. Alone and in charge of the baby for several days, José decides to draw again for the first time since he was fired. Lucie eventually returns home, and when the two start talking again, José decides to tell her the whole story about the neighbor. At first, she finds it hard to accept, but as she regains her faith in José, Lucie also begins to believe his story. One day, José visits Jean-Claude with Lucie, and the couple kill him together. The two then return to their own home, completely in love.