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Truly Dreadful Film

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The original French title of this film is SUR MES LÈVRES, lèvres being the French word for 'lips', and there are certainly plenty of lèvres in this film. The story concerns a girl who is deaf without her hearing aids, and even with them is still hard of hearing. Her ability to read lips is fundamental to the extraordinarily ingenious and complex thriller story which evolves in this film. The girl is played by Emmanuelle Devos, and I would say that her performance is so exceptional that it goes beyond brilliant and is one of the best screen performances of any French actress ever (ranking with Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf, for instance). Rarely has any actress mastered such a vast range of subtle nuances in an extremely intimate performance. The perfect director for this particular film, who also jointly wrote the screenplay, was Jacques Audiard. There is probably no other director alive at the present time who is such a master of the incorporation into a film of extreme closeups, without their seeming in any way intrusive or overdone. In this film, we need them in order to see the lips and the eyes. In fact this film is so full of lips and eyes that sometimes they seem more important than the characters themselves. But that is because they really are. There are numerous very good films about deaf people, and also a very good American TV series SWITCHED AT BIRTH (2011-2017) about a deaf teenager, who is brilliantly played by Katie Leclerc, who really is partially deaf (in the series she plays one of the two girls who was switched at birth). Marlee Matlin is a famous example of a deaf actress who won a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar. And sometimes the abilities of deaf people to read lips has entered significantly into film plots. Deaf people actually make very good subject matter for the cinema in general, and such stories can be very emotional and meaningful, as can all serious films involving people who have any kind of physical handicap, since it shows us vividly what they are going through as they struggle to compensate for their handicaps. One of the finest examples of this type of film is NEVER FEAR, aka THE YOUNG LOVERS (1949), directed by Ida Lupino, which is a marvellous example of how to make a film about a physical handicap without being maudlin or condescending. The other thoroughly remarkable performance in this film is by Vincent Cassell, who plays an emotionally backward and rather oafish small time criminal who has just come out of prison. He applies to Devos's company for a job and she takes pity on him, because he too, like herself, is struggling against all the odds. He has almost no training or education and has never even made a photocopy or been in an office before, despite the fact that he is to become her office assistant. She covers for him and conceals from her colleagues that he spends every night sleeping in a sleeping bag in the company's lavatory. This strange pair slowly bond to one another in a most touching way, as two of life's outcasts who team up to try to overcome their respective debilitating handicaps together. Cassell beats up and threatens a dishonest colleague of Devos who has been preventing her from getting commissions on jobs, so that the man leaves the firm. But all of these developments are mere preliminaries to set the scene for what is to follow. The main plot of the film then involves a level of complexity and ingenuity which really is extraordinary. Just to give an example, Cassell discovers that a crime is afoot, and he persuades Devos to watch the plotters through a window, from a rooftop through binoculars, and over a series of evenings to write down what they are saying from reading their lips, in order to discover where and when the crime will be committed. The film is a very exciting and first-rate thriller with terrific character development and protagonists who are thoroughly three-dimensional. The film is truly superb and a real classic.

Carla is a partially deaf woman who works in an office at a real estate firm in Paris. I was a bit unsure as to whether I found Carla to be wholly believable. She's one of those lonely hearts who somehow is sexually repressed. Her lack of confidence is explained by her handicap as well as constantly being made fun of by her co-workers. She is so stressed out that she ends up fainting on the job, which leads her boss (who unlike the intolerant co-workers) offers to hire an assistant for her. The arrival of the assistant, Paul, a parolee, is the film's inciting incident.Carla begins her Act 2 journey tied to Paul, who makes it quite clear that office work just isn't his 'thing'. Carla at first plays hard to get with bad boy Paul due to that sexual repression. Even if you buy the idea that no-so-bad-looking Carla is clueless when it comes to men, she has no guilt feelings about moving up in the office hierarchy. Ironically, it's not the amoral Paul who urges her to come up with the idea of stealing a co-worker's file, leading to the co-worker's resignation--it's actually Carla herself! As a result, mousy little Carla is promoted from secretary to project manager. After Carla finds Paul a place to stay, an apartment under construction, owned by her firm—she makes it clear that she no longer has any fear of the fledging sociopath when boldly stating to him: "You owe me".While Vincent Cassell is fairly convincing as Paul, the character could have used a bit more humor. He just was a little too one-note for me, although Cassell does well in establishing Paul as truly menacing. The rest of 'Read my lips' chronicles Carla's defection to the 'dark side' as she transforms herself into the amoral counterpart of her bad boy love interest. Carla's transformation takes place gradually—she puts on a sexy outfit but almost gets herself raped outside a nightclub, only to be saved by Paul who is now beginning to show a 'sensitive' side. Now it's Carla's turn to pay Paul back for his 'good deed' and agrees to hang out on a rooftop, clutching a pair of binoculars, and attempting to read the lips of Paul's new boss, Marchand, and his sleazy associates, so that Paul may discover if they're plotting a crime, which ultimately might give him a chance to rip them off.While the whole idea that Carla is actually able to read the lips of people through binoculars seems a bit dubious, I was willing to suspend my disbelief with the hope that the second half of Act 2, your basic caper story, picked up. Some of it's clever, as a plane ticket apparently is the Macguffin here, with Carla breaking into Marchand's apartment and planting the ticket inside his coat—thus leading his associates to believe that Marchand has double crossed them, stealing their money and then apparently buying the ticket with plans to leave the country. As it turns out, it's Carla and Paul who have pulled off the heist and leave Marchand holding the proverbial bag. Not all of it's clear as Marchand and company attack each other off screen and we never get to learn who exactly is killed and who survives.The film's denouement is a big letdown as it becomes clear that director Jacques Audiard's sympathies lie more with the criminal element than with a law abiding citizenry. At first one wonders if Audiard is merely presenting a film noir-like tale of an amoral couple 'getting away' with a crime without being punished. That works in a film like 'Chinatown', since the film's scenarists are not making a statement, approving of the amoral characters' behavior but merely chronicling a sordid verisimilitude. In 'Read my Lips', however, Audiard's 'Carla and Paul' have become the French version of 'Bonnie and Clyde'.Carla finally casts off her sexual aversions and gets down with the bad boy at film's end. She's now united with Paul in flipping the bird at respectable society (remember Audiard feels that Carla is justified in her rebellion as the so-called 'respectable' members of society are the very people who made fun of her in the office because of her disability). Despite committing a crime, Audiard doesn't see this as such as bad thing, since after all, the victims here are much more unsavory than Carla and Paul (but do Carla and Paul really come off as completely untainted? I do seem to recall that Marchand's wife is unfairly used by Carla in this scheme, and is left at scene of the crime to face the wrath of either a betrayed husband or his vengeful partners in crime. Not very noble of either one of them!).For those who don't understand why the parole officer appears in this film, I believe I can explain it. For Director Audiard, Paul's Parole Officer is the key to explaining the film's theme. All along, we're led to believe that the Parole Officer represents the good part of society—he's more like a social worker trying to help Paul (unlike the unmentionables who made fun of Carla back at the office). But when Paul and Carla 'run into' Paul at the film's climax, it's the Parole Office who is being led away by the police for killing his wife (in an apparent mercy killing). So now the ultimate symbol of the law abiding citizenry is an apparent murderer and the amoral protagonists (lonely heart Carla transformed into bad girl who joins already bad boy Paul) are actually charming waifs who have committed a wholly justifiable robbery.One can only conclude that 'Read My Lips' ultimately devolves into a 'feel good' fairy tale of amoral criminals, whom Director Audiard clearly wants us to root for. You might be bewitched by Carla's transformation or the mechanics of Paul's heist scheme, but ultimately there's nothing admirable about the protagonists' sordid machinations.

Sur mes lèvres or READ MY LIPS is fine little thriller that also examines the lives of 'outsiders', people who live in the periphery of our vision who struggle with the need to 'fit in'. Director Jacques Audiard with and co-writer Tonino Benacquista have created a tense, tight, completely entertaining little thriller that makes some significant statements about out of the norm individuals and their plights.Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) is a plain Jane, mostly deaf, thirty something unnoticed secretary for a company whose life is one of social and sexual isolation and whose view of the future is rather bleak. Enter Paul (Vincent Cassel) a recent released ex-con parolee who responds to an ad to be Carla's assistant. There is a mutual physical repulsion at first meeting: Carla had hoped for a well-groomed, genteel man who might fulfill her fantasies and Paul is a coarse, unkempt sleazy guy who is not impressed with being a clerk. Their concepts change rather quickly when Paul salvages Carla's job by filling her request to steal a letter that would cost her her job and Paul discovers Carla's lip reading ability which he sees as a way to spy on the criminals from his past who threaten his life for money owed. So this odd couple of a team join forces and together enter a dangerous suspense filled ploy to gain Paul's safety and freedom. The relationship is full of twists and edge of the seat suspense with each of these unlikely characters fulfilling roles in their lives that fill the chinks in their walls of isolation in surprising ways.Devos and Cassel deliver bravura performances and the remainder of the cast is uniformly strong. Once again Alexandre Desplat has produced a musical score that enhances the tension and cinematographer Mathieu Vadepied finds all the right lighting and angles to suggest the worlds of isolation of the characters as well as the Hitchcockian sense of suspense. Director Audiard wisely manipulates a factor that is at once sensitive and transformative for the story: he shows us the difference between 'hearing' the world with and without hearing aids and in doing so makes some powerful social comments. This is a fine film that remains in the ranks of the best of the French film noir genre. Recommended. Grady Harp

What is very French about this film is the time taken to establish the two leading characters. This might require a bit of patience, especially since neither is "attractive" in the typical Hollywood definition of such. However, once the "heist" kicks in, the film rushes forward quickly, perhaps at times too quickly. But it is a real rollercoaster ride and if you don't look too closely it is all quite believable. The kind of film that you know Hollywood would have botched up.