Entertainment
After Netflix’s Most Controversial Movie, Jacques Audiard’s Mystery Thriller Deserves a Second Look
For better or worse, mainstream audiences were exposed to French auteur Jacques Audiard last year for his Oscar-winning dark musical dramedy, Emilia Pérez. Marked as a highly divisive film coming out of the Cannes Film Festival, the movie, released on Netflix, was met with more disdain as time went on, leaving viewers baffled that major awards bodies were throwing all their love toward his misguided and tonally off-kilter movie about everything and nothing simultaneously. Due to its portrayal of transgender issues and drug trafficking, Emilia Pérez felt like a scientifically created piece of provocation, but viewers were not amused, even with an Oscar-winning performance by Zoe Saldaña.
Setting aside the bad taste that his latest film left in everyone’s mouth, there’s no doubting Audiard’s chops as a visionary filmmaker with an expressive eye for visual language and intimate character drama. Nowhere are his unique talents more evident than in one of his early films, Read My Lips, an inventive film crossed with a romantic drama waiting to be discovered.
‘Read My Lips’ Is a Seductive French Noir Built on Manipulation and Desire
With notoriety comes an increased awareness of an artist’s previous work. For most, audiences are perplexed as to how the director of bold dramas and crime thrillers like A Prophet and Rust and Bone could turn out such a grave misfire in Emilia Pérez, miraculously his first film to receive major awards recognition in the United States. As part of the spotlight on Audiard last year, the Criterion Collection began restoring his early films, including The Beat That My Heart Skipped and Read My Lips, a lean, captivating, and seamless concoction of genres that is the perfect counter to the bloat and excess of Emilia Pérez.
Available to stream on the Criterion Channel, Read My Lips stars Emmanuelle Devos as Carla, a hard-of-hearing secretary, and Vincent Cassel as Paul, an ex-con on parole working in Carla’s office. The two start a transactional romance, where Paul uses Carla’s lip-reading skills to spy on his criminal associates, while Carla recruits Paul to perform dirty tricks to climb the corporate ladder after being wronged by her boss. Devos would go on to win a César Award for Best Actress (along with Audiard for Best Screenplay), and French mega-star Cassel was on the cusp of becoming a mainstay in Hollywood in films like Ocean’s Twelve and Black Swan.
Like any good shadowy film, Read My Lips centers around characters who think they have their plans all figured out, only to have disastrous consequences awaiting them. While Jacques Audiard is known for his distinct voice behind the camera, he restrains his style to focus on the strength of two stirring performances by Devos and Cassel, who play off each other like romantic partners and toxic enemies simultaneously, a dynamic that is the center of the narrative. You never know where the film is going to take you, an element that can make any rudimentary crime thriller into an immersive cinematic experience, and Audiard lets the characterization and meditative reflections on capitalism carry the momentum. There’s a loose quality to Read My Lips that is reminiscent of films of the French New Wave.
Are Carla and Paul Really in Love in ‘Read My Lips’?
What’s clear, however, is that Carla and Paul are plunging into a world of senseless violence. Paul’s intrigue with Carla’s lip-reading is a probing examination of our fascination with the human body, a proclivity that only enhances the life-or-death stakes of the overarching mission involving his goal to obtain money to pay back his former boss. Furthermore, Carla, stricken with loneliness and alienation, is touchingly entranced by Paul’s rebellious, “bad boy” spirit, a feeling that clouds her practical judgment.
Audiard blurs the line between true love and manipulation in Read My Lips. It’s up to the viewer to decide whether the two are genuinely in love or simply desperate to use each other to settle scores with threats in their lives, a crime boss, in Paul’s case. They clearly strike a bond, but at what point are they trying to serve their own interests? The film updates the familiar brooding character archetypes, with Paul acting as the hard-boiled, down-on-his-luck grifter and Carla acting as the manipulative and manipulated femme fatale. Thanks to Audiard’s attention to the peculiarity of social connections, the romance is not a creative device, but rather, a confirming notion that love transcends all class and behavioral divides.
Emilia Pérez, another film about people on opposite sides of the law and society with a strange kinship, was unfortunately hindered by needless flash and provocation. Read My Lips succeeds where Emilia Pérez stumbled because Audiard trusts ambiguity, intimacy, and character over spectacle. The result is a romantic noir that lingers long after its final act of violence.
Read My Lips
- Release Date
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October 17, 2001
- Runtime
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115 minutes
- Director
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Jacques Audiard
- Writers
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Tonino Benacquista, Jacques Audiard
Cast
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Emmanuelle Devos
Carla Behm
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