Written by Linda
February 14, 2009
Cruel office-gossip can't hurt if the target is out of earshot, right? Not if the subject of the whispers is partially deaf and happens to be able to read the lips of her mocking co-workers.
Carla (Emmanuelle Devos), an under-appreciated, lonely, and bitter secretary at a large consulting firm thinks she may have a chance to finally make a friend at work when she is allowed to hire an assistant. When she requests a man with "nice hands and good grooming," the employment agency sends over Paul (Vincent Cassel). The fact that Paul is a freshly paroled ex-con with an obvious lack of office skills is no deterrent to Carla whom can only see the personal possibilities. But two desperate people do not a perfect couple make. With both nothing and everything to lose, Carla and Paul form a kind of shaky friendship based on a touch of blackmail and a heap of trust. After they collaborate on some small-time office revenge, Paul gets the urge to pull off that One Last Job: to rip off the big-time gangsters that landed him in jail in the first place. But he'll need Carla's help....
Read My Lips portrays the most uncomfortably realistic depiction of the impersonal modern corporation that I've seen since Clockwatchers. Awash in bad neon lighting, with the hum of office machinery, and the poor sight-lines of cubicle-land, Carla and Paul's world is surprisingly sinister in its regularity.
Emmanuelle Devos is brave as an actress in that Carla is not really particularly likable, which would have made her an easy sympathetic character. Carla's world is small and lonely, but she's also selfish and desperate. We see from her point of view the whispers and sneers at work, and the way she retreats into her own comfortable silence by taking out her hearing aid. In a way Paul is her perfect match. These two characters would in no way even move in the same circles if it weren't for the fact that they've both been rejected by everyone else at the office.
Moving along at a brisk pace, Read My Lips takes several unexpected twists and turns. With the contrasting backdrops of a seedy crime underworld and an equally menacing modern office-place, director Jacques Audiard (A Self-Made Hero) weaves a tight and unconventional thriller of two desperate souls conspiring to wreak their own very personal revenge.
