REVIEW: DVD Release: Read My Lips

Film: Read My Lips
Release date: 6th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 115 mins
Director: Jacques Audiard
Starring: Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos, Olivier Gourmet, Olivier Perrier, Olivia Bonamy
Genre: Crime/Drama/Romance/Thriller
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: France

Audiard has made waves with his twist on the crime genre. If A Prophet was the film that made his name, then Read My Lips is the film that first got him recognised. After A Self Made Hero and See How They Fall in the mid-90s, this 2001 release went on to cause a huge buzz in France. With Cesar nominations and awards galore, Audiard creates a probing look at the not so pretty side of Paris that has gone on to become his trademark.

Carla is a thirty-something office worker in central Paris. She is single and deaf with only a hearing aid to give her partial hearing. When she faints at work, Carla is offered an office assistant to help with her workload in the building industry. The agency sends her an attractive young man named Paul for the position - an ex-convict desperate to make an honest living whilst he is on parole.

Paul starts work, shakily struggling to get to grips with the office environment that is so foreign to him. When Carla finds him spending the night in one of the store rooms, she offers him a place to stay, giving him the keys to a flat in one of the company’s unfinished buildings. In response to Carla’s charity, Paul makes a sexual advance on her, but she turns him down much to his frustration.

Carla’s timid nature is not only affecting her personal relationships but is getting her no respect in her job - she has the ability to lip read and constantly picks up on her cruel colleague’s snipes and jeers about her. When she is overlooked for a lucrative opportunity at work, she asks Paul to help her get an upper hand on her disrespectful superiors, and he reluctantly steals files that help her seal a big deal with one of the company’s partners.

When Paul is called up by club owner Marchand, he is forced to leave the office to repay his debt, and Marchand makes him a bar-man at his club. When Paul dreams up a plan to scam Marchand, he calls Carla back into his life. He has thought up a plan to use Carla’s lip reading, and it’s time she repays him for his help...


Audiard is a director whose heart lies in his roots. Parisian born, Audiard is dedicated to telling stories in the backdrop of his home city. The French capitol is famed for its beauty and iconic scenery, but in Audiard’s Paris there is rarely a postcard picture in site - he surrounds his films with run-down buildings, dank city streets and ominous night life. This bleak version of the city is not an entirely new concept when considering the realism of classics like Irreversible and La Haine but Audiard installs an atmosphere entirely of his own.

He does this by portraying the mundane struggle of the inner-city as well it’s very exciting dangers. In The Beat That My Heart Skipped we saw the daily bump and grind of a real estate broker, in A Prophet the solitude of prison, and here the utterly dull routine of office work. Audiard’s world is an uncomfortable place to be, as it displays an air of discontent and turmoil in surroundings that are bleak with a capital B.

This discontent is felt most strongly here by Carla. She is an oddball whose behaviour is more empathetic than it is endearing - scenes of her stood naked in the mirror show her longing with agonising pain. She is an outcast as much for her timid nature as she is for her deafness - subsequently she is unappreciated by friends, disrespected by co-workers but also intriguing to Paul. With themes of crime and the complexity of the heist the two dream up, it is their relationship that is the film’s main drive and most appealing arc.

Their relationship is something all together uncomfortable and fascinating to watch. It evolves with a tension that is both sexual and emotional - Audiard puts his main focus on the complexity of his characters. The two leads are a most unlikely pairing, but what they lack in common ground they make up for with a shared vulnerability and lack of social place.

This leads to them having the most bizarre of cinematic understandings. They show a fair amount of contempt for each other also - their relationship is heated stemming from an early advance from Paul which is aggressive and entirely miscalculated. However, throughout the course of the film, we see how their extreme differences compensate for each other’s shortcomings. We see Paul defend Carla against an attacker in the same way we see Carla lying for Paul to his parole officer. They are two characters that alone are hopeless but together are something extremely special.

The romance is central to the film but the crime-drama motif that features is also done with the upmost conviction. Paul’s scam is simple but engrossingly risky. Working in a bar for Marchand, he is sent to deliver bottles of champagne to his boss and two of his shady associates in a flat opposite the club. He steals a copy of the key and tells Carla to watch and lip read the gang’s moves so they can steal the expectedly large riches they bring back to the flat. As Carla sits on a rooftop clad with a sleeping bag and binoculars, you can’t help but think of Rear Window - it is the tension and discomfort of watching them carry out their plan that truly matches the suspense of a Hitchcock film.

Emmanuelle Devos won the Cesar award for her performance, and it is a treat to see a strong female role stand out in Audiard’s work. He has made a habit of revolving his films around strong male leads, such as Roman Duris and, more recently, Tahar Rahim, but despite a great turn by the consistently watchable Cassel, it is Devos who really stands out here. Supported by a fantastic script, she plays the part as a timid loner for whom we feel every blow and put down, but simultaneously feel every piece of progress she makes.


For fans of A Prophet, this is a film you should strive to see. Audiard starts here his attack on the crime drama with a piece that is daringly erotic, entirely compelling and, despite its grim facade, beautiful. LW

REVIEW: DVD Release: Them

Film: Them
Release date: 25th August 2008
Certificate: 18
Running time: 73 mins
Director: David Moreau & Xavier Palud
Starring: Olivia Bonamy, Michaël Cohen, Adriana Mocca, Maria Roman, Camelia Maxim
Genre: Horror/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: In2Film
Format: DVD
Country: France/Romania

Them continues in the tradition of the recent wave of intense French horror that has included films such as Switchblade Romance and the excellent, if controversial Martyrs. All three films are intense and graphic in a manner that is rarely seen in mainstream popular cinema, and all three share a similar sense of realism, making them all the more disturbing. Unlike Switchblade and Martyrs, however, Them, as we are told at the beginning, is based on actual events and, rather surprisingly considering we live in the ‘torture porn’ era of horror filmmaking, the film contains almost no blood.

French couple Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) and Lucas (Michael Cohen) have recently relocated to Romania to begin a new life. Clementine is a French-language teacher, and Lucas, when not playing computer games on his laptop, is a stay at home writer. They are a normal couple living a normal existence in their large country house on the outskirts of Bucharest.

One evening at home, the couple hear strange noises from outside their home, and before they know it they are suddenly faced by an unseen force terrorising their home. The two try desperately to escape their tormentors, which leads them into the nearby woods where a fight for survival ensues…


If all this sounds a tad simple and familiar, it’s because it is. Them will never win an award for originality - home invasion films have been around for quite some time - however, a number of factors help to make the film at least succeed in being genuinely tense, and, at times, downright scary.

One of those factors, or two as the case is here, are the directors, David Moreau and Xavier Palud. They clearly know how to create and wring every ounce of tension from their screenplay, making sure that no palms are left dry. They set the tone early, with an opening scene that will have you watching behind your fingers. Their handheld shooting style creates a realistic and edgy atmosphere often making the tension unbearable, particularly during one scene in which our heroine hides from her tormentor in an upstairs hideaway filled with plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling.

The fantastic use of sound effects, from a genuinely unsettling rattling sound (which is explained in the final scene) to the simple sounds of rain falling, televisions blaring and a telephone ringing, contribute perfectly to the overall sense of impending doom.

Both lead actors are believable and suitably shaken in their roles, essential as they are the only two onscreen for the majority of the film. Running scared for the most part, they commit fully. It’s a shame then that the film refuses to tell us much about them. With the exception of a brief dinner scene, and some light-hearted conversations early on, we are given very little reason to care about their predicament, or the eventual outcome.

Once the resolution arrives, and we see clearly for the first time what our protagonists have been facing, it’s a bit of a letdown, but, on reflection, perhaps one that is more plausible than wild imaginations can muster. It’s also an ending that refuses to sugar coat, to admirable and shocking effect.

What really lets Them down is how bare the film feels. At just 77 minutes long, and with a very simple premise, the film teeters on being too simplistic for its own good. Perhaps this is justified by its ‘real events’ claim, but you can’t escape the feeling that there’s not enough substance.


Those looking for a strong story and proper character development will be left feeling a little short changed. Horror fans who revel in being on the edge of their seat will be more than satisfied, however. GY