Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Fantastic!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

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.

This is a typical French drama, which means you'll have to wait for the inevitable of course; but on the other hand, if you're use to this genre, you may not expect the inevitable to occur. It does. There, I just spoiled it; you were warned. If you are a Jacques Audiard fan, as I am, you will not be disappointed. Each film directed by the man has rewarded my expectations.Carla, played by Emmanuelle Devos, is a near totally deaf employee at a major construction and development firm where only her supervisor appears to have noticed her talent and dedication, whereas her co-workers see her with a different and biased eye. She manages with a hearing aid and by putting in more work than anyone else. Her boss recognizing this assigns her an intern, which she can pick herself. She picks Paul, an ex-convict, played by fame international star Vincent Cassel; I assumed the character of Carla was sympathetic to underdog Paul for obvious reasons, but I realized soon enough it was because he took her seriously and felt some degree of gratitude when she goes beyond what he expected and finds him accommodations on top of making sure he keeps his job. Paul has a much different outlook on life. When he notices she reads lips, he puts two and two together and sees the potential for spying on a gang of criminals who he wants to rip-off. He convinces her to do this for him and she very reluctantly obliges, having developed for him feelings, not reciprocated until the very end of the movie.The caper does not go all that well and almost fails; were it not for Carla putting herself at risk to get Paul what he wanted, he would have not only lost his chance, but also his life. That was all that was needed for him to wake up to the love of the woman meant for him. I'm just a sucker for those kinds of movies and if you liked my synopsis, you'll like the movie.

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.

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