By Julian Wood
Though now renowned as one of France’s most striking and original filmmakers thanks to crackling critical darlings like A Prophet, Dheepan, Rust And Bone and The Sisters Brothers, Jacques Audiard was still a talent on the rise when he released Read My Lips in 2001. With just two features (1994’s See How They Fall, 1996’s A Self-Made Hero) under his belt, Audiard already had an obvious facility for stylish visuals and gripping storytelling.
His third effort, Read My Lips, is a profoundly satisfying French thriller, not least because it lets the tension emerge organically from the situations created. First we meet Carla (affectingly played by Emmanuelle Devos), a shy and partially deaf woman in her thirties who works in a male-dominated office. When her boss offers her an underling, she deliberately chooses a man. She gets ex-convict Paul – a wonderfully disheveled Vincent Cassel – who brings his criminal hardness to the corporate jungle. Cassel (Irreversible, Eastern Promises, Mesrine, Partisan) is one of those slightly alarming actors who makes you worry that he might jump out of the screen and throttle you…slowly.
Actually, it is his character who mostly gets a beating as he unwisely re-mixes with his criminal associates. It is Carla’s skills as a lip reader which come in handy as Paul tries to out-scam some local heavies. There are some deliberately Hitchcockian Rear Window touches here with Carla in the flats opposite, seeing Paul in danger and unable to warn him. Melodramatic endings can sometimes unbalance low key thrillers, but this one gets it about right. Devos handles Carla’s descent into being a criminal-aide in a way which keeps you rooting for her, and the chemistry between her and Cassel is nice and spiky. The film also has a carefully chosen visual style where glimpses and frequently occluded shots somehow parallel the broken up sound-world of the deaf heroine. Rarely referenced today, Read My Lips is well worth catching.
