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Read My Lips [2002]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Workplace dramas seem to have become a French speciality, and Jacques Audiard's Read My Lips ("Sur mes levres") proves a worthy follow-up to such notable predecessors in the genre as Human Resources and Time Out ("L'Emploi du temps"). The film also nods towards Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men and Hitchcock's Rear Window, but it's none the worse for that. Carla, our anti-heroine (Emmanuelle Devos), is an ugly duckling working as a secretary for a construction company in suburban Paris. Dowdy and all-but deaf, she's exploited and put upon by her male coworkers. When her boss lets her hire an assistant she bizarrely chooses Paul (Vincent Cassel), a scruffy and none-too-bright ex-con. But an odd symbiosis grows up between this pair of losers; the combination of his petty-criminal skills and her lip-reading abilities has certain potentials.

As A Self-Made Hero, his previous movie, showed, Audiard doesn't go in for lovable characters. Carla is no long-suffering saint and Paul is frankly sleazy, but this just makes their interaction all the more intriguing. Devos, glowering malevolently beneath her dark brows, and Cassel with his greasy hair and ratty moustache, turn in relishably truculent and un-starry performances, and Audiard deftly manages the transition from office comedy to gangland heist thriller with no grinding of gears. By the end the plot starts to strain belief, but it scarcely matters. The noir-ish lighting and potent use of hand-held close-ups enhance the film's sense of nervous unease, and there's ingenious use of sound to convey Carla's hearing-impaired world. Downbeat and unblinkingly amoral, Read My Lips offers pleasures that a glossier treatment would have missed entirely.

On the DVD: Read My Lips has no extras on the disc beyond the trailer. But the transfer is clean and crisp, offering the full-width original ratio, and the Dolby sound captures the all-important subtleties of the soundtrack flawlessly. --Philip Kemp


Cracker
Review date: 2008-02-20 Rating: 6 out of 10

this is a cracking little thriller, good plot,decent acting, quite pacy keeps you wondering how it will end.

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Reviews


never underestimate anyone
Review date: 2007-12-12 Rating: 10 out of 10

this is a great, very clever and intelligent film, quite pacey and always getting to its point! well worth the money too.
the two main characters come together through there different needs and despite there less than honourable intentions towards each other soon realise they need each other.
turning diss-advantage to advantage on both sides

Cracking French thriller
Review date: 2007-11-17 Rating: 8 out of 10

This is a really unusual film in terms of plot, acting and style. Both the female and male lead are hardly the most attractive of French actors and yet there is a sexy sizzle that runs throughout - intense, passionate and exciting. Running parallel is a brutal story of extortion, theft and murder. Absolutely cracking thriller - only the French can make the hearing impaired sexy!


great plot
Review date: 2007-06-29 Rating: 10 out of 10

French cinema at its best for what it is good at: complex plots in realistic settings, great acting. The other reviewer have said it all. Go watch it.

Genre clash - it's the future
Review date: 2007-05-24 Rating: 8 out of 10

Carla works for a property developer's where she excels in being unattractive, unappreciated and desperate. She is also deaf.
Her boss offers to hire in somebody to alleviate her heavy workload so she uses the opportunity to secure herself some male company. Help arrives in the form of Paul, a tattooed hoodlum fresh out of prison and clearly unsuited to the mannered routine of an office environment.
An implicit sexual tension develops between the two of them and Carla is determined to keep him on despite his reluctance to embrace the working week. When Carla is edged out of an important contract she was negotiating by a slimy colleague she exploits Paul's criminality by having him steal the contract back. The colleague quickly realises that she's behind the robbery, but when he confronts her, Paul's readiness to punch people in the face comes in handy too - but this thuggery comes at a price.
Paul is given a `going over' by some mob acquaintances as a reminder about an unpaid debt. He formulates a plan which utilises Carla's unique lip reading abilities to rip-off a gang of violent bank robbers. It's now Carla's turn to enter a frightening new world.

The fourth feature from director Jacques Audiard, `READ MY LIPS' begins as a thoroughly engaging romantic drama between two marginalised losers only to shift gears halfway through into an edgy thriller where their symbiotic shortcomings turn them into winners. The leads are excellent; effortlessly convincing us that this odd couple could really connect. Carla's first meeting with Paul is an enjoyable farce in which she attempts to circumnavigate his surly reticence and jailbird manners only to discover that he was, until very recently, a jailbird. Emmanuelle Devos, who plays Carla, has that almost exclusive ability to go from dowdy to gorgeous and back again within a frame. Vincent Cassel plays Paul as a cornered dog who only really seems at home when he's receiving a beating or concocting the rip-off that is likely to get him killed.

Like many French films, `READ MY LIPS' appears, at first, to be about nothing in particular until you scratch beneath the surface and find that it's probably about everything. The only bum note is a subplot concerning the missing wife of Paul's parole officer; a device that seems contrived only to help steer the main thrust of the story into a neat little feelgood cul-de-sac.

It was the French `New Wave' of the 60's that first introduced the concept of `genre' to film making and I've always felt that any medium is somewhat compromised when you have to use a system of labels to help define it; so it's always a pleasure to discover a film that seems to transcend genre, or better still, defy it.

Adrian Stranik

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Emmanuelle Devos
Vincent Cassel

Creators:
Vincent Cassel (Primary Contributor)
Emmanuelle Devos (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Pathe Distribution
Manufacturer: Pathe Distribution
EAN: 5060002831076
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2003-03-10
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 113 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2001
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: French (Original Language)

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