Read My Lips

Director Jacques Audiard
France 2001
115 minutes

Carla is a long-time employee of a property development company. Her career is limited and she is looking to move up. As a 35-year-old woman with a hearing deficiency, she is not sure how to climb out of her humdrum life. Into her life comes Paul Angeli, a new trainee she decides to hire. Carla covers for him when the need arises because - he's a thief, fresh out of jail and very good-looking.

From the outset Audiard's suspenseful thriller manipulates the soundtrack to immerse us in Carla's fragile world by switching her hearing aids on and off. Nor is she a stereotypical saintly disabled character - embittered and jealous, she relishes the settling of old scores.

Our notes

Carla is a hearing-impaired, 35-year old woman who works as a secretary in a property development company. Her life is ruled by routine - she never goes out and her efforts at work have been rewarded with neglect and in some cases with contempt by others in the office. She longs to move forward both in her career and in her personal life but, encumbered by her hearing deficiency, she is unsure how to do so.

Carla’s looks are ordinary and she seems to exist as an invisible service to others. Colleagues leave their half-empty coffee cups on her desk; she has no social life; has neighbours who dump their children on her for baby-sitting and lives in a world of shouts and whispers, depending on the function of her hearing aid. To bring us more into Carla's world, Audiard occasionally gives us her point-of-view, not only visually but audibly.

As Carla removes her bulky hearing aid the film's sound reduces to become almost mute, giving us a sense of what it is like to be in her position. This, like many other details employed by the director, builds strong character sympathy. Apparently she was once more deaf than she is now, and is improving.

When her bosses decide she needs an assistant she takes on an unskilled but charismatic 25-year old man, Paul, who has just got out of prison and has nowhere to live. Carla is immediately attracted to Paul, and he recognises this, and decides to manipulate the attraction for his own purposes.

Paul has not completely cut his connections to the criminal element in the city where they live. He moonlights as a bartender, has dubious deals on the side and finds out almost by accident about a bag of loot that's ripe for the stealing. He can't pull off the job by himself and enlists Carla, who turns out to have that combination of cunning and hostility that makes successful criminals. So, in return for helping her with her career goals, Paul persuades Carla to use her lip-reading abilities to aid him in casing out an apartment he intends to rob.

It is not, however, just a story in which the ability to read lips saves the day. She reads his lips, which means they can start a risky chain of events based on the odds that the bad men will respond as expected. By this point in the film, we are deep into crime, double-crosses, beatings and murder.

The acting is excellent. Emmanuelle Devos gives a flawless, emotionally-stirring performance. The chemistry and sexual tension between Paul and Carla lies just under the surface as the realist and the romantic alter expectations. Just as the lip-reading is not a payoff but a set-up, so the relationship of Carla and Paul is not about obvious sex, but a communion of two souls.

The plot is more than just a simple framework. It is complex and unpredictable, and provides the perfect means to get to know the characters and understand the shifting nature of their relationship. A lesser film would have had them in bed by the halfway mark but this film develops the characters who simultaneously attract and repel. Each behaves with a certain competitive hostility. Both a romantic thriller and a drama, Read My Lips is well paced and these elements come together and finish well with a twist in the tale – even if deliberately inconclusive.

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