- Actors: Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos
- Directors: Jacques Audiard
- Format: PAL
- Language English, French
- Subtitles: English
- Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 1.77:1
- Number of discs: 1
- Classification: 15
- Studio: Pathe
- DVD Release Date: 10 Mar 2003
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B00008AWRU
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 21,734 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)
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Reviews
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
Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
16:9 Wide Screen
French
Region 2
English
16:9 Wide Screen
French
Region 2
English
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Genre clash - it's the future,
By Adrian Stranik "Ade" (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Read My Lips [DVD] [2002] (DVD)
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
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cracker,
By Willian King "'Blueorby'" (Scotland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Read My Lips [DVD] [2002] (DVD)
this is a cracking little thriller, good plot,decent acting, quite pacy keeps you wondering how it will end.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Quirky, touching and moving.,
By
This review is from: Read My Lips [DVD] [2002] (DVD)
'Read My Lips'is fantastic! This odd, but compelling, thriller benefits from exceptional performances by the two principals, especially from Emmanuelle Devos, who manages to be victimised, intelligent, frumpish and sexy all at the same time.The action is tense and unpredictable, and the developing love story, as the two maladjusted characters begin to support each other, is touching without being sickly. French film at its best!
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