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Read My Lips [DVD] [2002]
 
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Read My Lips [DVD] [2002]

DVD ~ Vincent Cassel
4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
RRP: £19.99
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Frequently Bought Together

Read My Lips [DVD] [2002] + L'Appartement [DVD] [1995] + Tell No-One (Ne Le Dis A Personne) [DVD] [2006]
Total RRP: £57.97
Price For All Three: £13.94

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Product details

  • Actors: Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos
  • Directors: Jacques Audiard
  • Format: PAL, Widescreen
  • Language English, French
  • Subtitles: English
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: Pathe Distribution
  • DVD Release Date: 10 Mar 2003
  • Run Time: 113 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B00008AWRU
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 15,544 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

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


See all Reviews


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Customer Reviews

16 Reviews
5 star:
 (9)
4 star:
 (4)
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Genre clash - it's the future, 24 May 2007
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
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Ooh La La, 7 Sep 2005
By Sweary "Sweary" (Cork, Ireland) - See all my reviews
Amazing, thrilling, beautiful, insighful... there really aren't enough adjectives to describe what a joy this movie is.
A thriller with a heart, with characters both immoral and loveable, Read My Lips is a film everyone with a passing interst in cimena should see. This is how urban stories should be told, with equal passion and compassion, with edge of the seat nail-biting, with the occasional teary sniff. Both leads are utterly astounding, and the chemistry between them crackles off the screen. Probably my favourite film; I bought it approximately ten minutes after the credits rolled on my rental DVD!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Quirky, touching and moving., 7 Mar 2004
'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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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Be Careful What You Say
Carla is a secretary in a architecture's office, and she is deaf. She needs help with her work at the office, so her boss decides it might be time she got some help. Read more
Published 3 months ago by DL Productions UK

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
I can't summon up the same enthusiasm shown by other reviewers here, alas. This is only half the film that is the same director's later De Battre Mon Coeur a Cesse... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Humpty Dumpty

3.0 out of 5 stars Cracker
this is a cracking little thriller, good plot,decent acting, quite pacy keeps you wondering how it will end.
Published 16 months ago by Willian King

5.0 out of 5 stars never underestimate anyone
this is a great, very clever and intelligent film, quite pacey and always getting to its point! well worth the money too. Read more
Published 19 months ago by E. J. Williams

5.0 out of 5 stars great plot
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.
Published on 29 Jun 2007 by B. S. Buss

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Watch This FIlm
I think this film is amazing. I think the acting is very good and the story line orginal. I love a good romantic film, but this beets many American best sellers. Read more
Published on 17 Mar 2006 by Ms. Fl Hutchinson

3.0 out of 5 stars Watch out, Cassell's in a nightclub again..
"Read My Lips" is a workplace drama based on the relationship between two outcasts; a deaf, lip-reading secretary (Emmanuelle Davos) and her ex-con assistant (Vincent Cassell)... Read more
Published on 1 Mar 2006 by L. Davidson

4.0 out of 5 stars Read my lips
I thought this was a good french film that, whilst it had a share of brutality, this was inevitable in view of the nature of the plot and the type of crimminal element involved -... Read more
Published on 3 Nov 2005 by Pedro - Scotland

4.0 out of 5 stars Read my lips
I thought this was a good french film that, whilst it had a share of brutality, this was inevitable in view of the nature of the plot and the type of crimminal element involved -... Read more
Published on 3 Nov 2005

5.0 out of 5 stars Great thriller!
I really enjoyed this film, the characters were original and the storyline was not what I expected. Interesting the way the deaf woman sometimes chooses to turn her hearing aid... Read more
Published on 10 Oct 2005 by Crazy Punk

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