Read My Lips [DVD]

Product Description

Deaf secretary Carla is bullied by her mean-spirited male colleagues. When they suggest she needs an assistant it seems like the final insult, but when the first applicant is ex-con Paul she seizes the chance to change her life. Paul is clueless about clerical work as he has experience only of being a thief, but he is desperate for a job. Carla covers his mistakes, and he, anxious to go straight, reluctantly helps her take revenge on her colleagues. But one good turn deserves another, and when Paul asks Carla to return the favour, she finds herself drawn into the criminal underworld, ruled by another kind of ruthless bully; loan shark Marchand. Recognising her ability to lip-read as a weapon no one will have bargained for, Paul and Carla set out to see justice done.

This ingenious French crime thriller was directed by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, The Beat That My Heart Skipped) and stars Vincent Cassel (La Haine, Mesrine) and Emmanuelle Devos (Coco Before Chanel, Kings and Queen). The film won 3 César Awards in 2002.

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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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.