neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Read My Lips
	Jacques Audiard Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos, Olivier Gourmet, Olivier Perrier 2001		Smart, subtle, intricate and increasingly exciting French drama about a hard-of-hearing woman who is miserable in her secretarial job at a property development company until she hires an ex-con as her assistant. The homely, highly competent, but overworked Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) is ignored by her colleagues unless they need her to bail them out of a jam. She's rebuffed every time she angles for a better position or a higher salary. Instead, her boss agrees to let her bring in a trainee. The employment bureau sends Paul (Vincent Cassel of "Brotherhood of the Wolf"), a good-looking younger man with no clerical skills. But the mousy Carla keeps him on, even when she learns he's a thief on parole. As he fuels her repressed fantasies, Carla, whose lip-reading ability is useful for eavesdropping, decides that she and Paul can help each other get ahead. He moonlights as a bartender at a club that serves as a front for illegal dealings, so they hatch a risky plan to profit — a plan that gets riskier as it goes along.