At the heart of Jacques Audiard’s Read My Lips is the relationship between an ex-con, Paul (Vincent Cassel), and a nearly deaf, overworked secretary, Carla (Emmanuelle Devos), that’s redolent of the one between Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant’s characters in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. Paul recognizes Carla’s loneliness and she takes comfort in trying to make him go straight, and their interdependency gives way to a power struggle built on unspoken trust and a series of daring demands.
The film is as aware of the absurdity of a secretary needing an assistant as Carla is of her lack of social graces. Carla willingly shuts herself out from the rest of world by removing her hearing aids. Indeed, she seems more comfortable in silence; an expert lip-reader, she can decode the world around her, from a co-worker’s condemnations to a crook’s master plan. She never thinks herself better than Paul though both seem overly conscious of how they can exploit each other’s “talents” to overcome personal dilemmas. If it weren’t already clear, Audiard and Tonino Benacquista’s doesn’t lack for granular specificity.
Just as mysterious as the nature of Carla’s detachment from the world is the film’s own resistance to genre classification; if the passive-aggressive Carla refuses to ever be seen as a victim, the film itself refuses to ever be taken purely as awkward office comedy, romantic drama, or suspense thriller. Carla uses Paul to beat up a co-worker and fears that her newly gained power in the workplace will be compromised as soon as he leaves for a full-time job as a bartender. Paul uses Carla to decipher a scheme being planned by his employer, Marchand (Olivier Gourmet). That he doesn’t ask her permission to borrow her lips is indicative of the expected demands of their unspoken business relationship. “I’m not your fax machine,” she says, perhaps suggesting that his demands are best served with some affection.
There’s a haunting grace to Devos’s performance. In one scene, Carla shoos away a deaf man begging for money, and Devos makes plain that the woman’s discomfort is only with her own disability. Audiard situates a naked Devos before a full-length bedroom mirror a few times throughout the film, and though she’s only shown from the neck down, Devos’s awkward stance suggests that the woman is as distanced from her body as she is from much of the world.
If Hitchcock was keen on letting the spectator know more than his characters, Audiard takes a more realistic approach by never letting the audience see, hear, or know more than Carla and Paul. The director evokes Carla’s limited hearing and frequently obscured gaze via unflashy manipulations of the film’s soundtrack and careful placement of his camera.
Nonetheless, the suspense that the film so painstakingly whips up is cheapened by a series of sloppy edits during a scene where Carla and Paul infiltrate Marchand’s office. More lethal, though, is a superfluous subplot involving Paul’s parole officer (Olivier Perrier) that functions neither as red herring nor as an existential mirror to Carla or Paul’s plights. Still, Audiard tackles the film’s plot twists with incredible brio, taking them not so much to their logical ends as he does to a place that feels, intelligently and sexily, like the consummation of the inevitable.
Image/Sound
Columbia TriStar Home Video presents Read My Lips in its original 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and its an all-around impeccable transfer. Because the nature of sight and sound is integral to Jacques Audiard’s film, it’s no surprise that that the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track is so expansive (the sound of utensils falling against dinner plates makes a considerable impact) and the image so incredibly evocative. Edge enhancement is nil, shadow delineation is impeccable, and skin tones are so accurate they’re almost ethereal.
Extras
Just the film’s theatrical trailer and trailers for Cowboy Bebop: The Movie and another for Double Vision.
Overall
Sadly there are no notable supplemental features on this DVD edition of Read My Lips but, then again, it’s Audiard’s taut screenplay and even more effective observation of a very complex relationship that’s key here.
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