Thanks for the memories!

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

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.

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.

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

"Read My Lips (Sur mes lèvres)" (which probably has different idiomatic resonance in its French title) is a nifty, twisty contemporary tale of office politics that unexpectedly becomes a crime caper as the unusually matched characters slide up and down an ethical and sensual slippery slope.The two leads are magnetic, Emmanuelle Devos (who I've never seen before despite her lengthy resume in French movies) and an even more disheveled than usual Vincent Cassel (who has brought a sexy and/or threatening look and voice to some US movies).The first half of the movie is on her turf in a competitive real estate office and he's the neophyte. The second half is on his turf as an ex-con and her wrenching adaptation to that milieu.Writer/director Jacques Audiard very cleverly uses the woman's isolating hearing disability as an entrée for us into her perceptions, turning the sound up and down for us to hear as she does (so it's even more annoying than usual when audience members talk), using visuals as sensory reactors as well.None of the characters act as anticipated (she is not like that pliable victim from "In the Company of Men," not in individual interactions, not in scenes, and not in the overall arc of the unpredictable story line (well, until the last shot, but heck the audience was waiting for that fulfillment) as we move from a hectic modern office, to a hectic disco to romantic and criminal stake-outs. There is a side story that's thematically redundant and unnecessary, but that just gives us a few minutes to catch our breaths.This is one of my favorites of the year! (originally written 7/28/2002)

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.